I’m not talking about a typo or mispronouncing a word you’ve only seen in print, but when you absentmindedly take an existing word and modify it in a non-standard manner. I’m asking this of native speakers of any language, because I want to hear from people who can be assumed to be as fluent in that language as humanly possible.
As for me, a native English speaker, I frequently hear myself say “felled” instead of “fell” or “fallen”, ie. “Whoa, I almost felled over!” Of course it comes out sounding more like “felt”, but obviously from context you can tell which word I mean.
Once in a while, I catch myself saying “boughten” instead of “bought” (as in, “I wouldn’t have boughten it if I knew it would break that easily”). I’m so sorry.
Gosh, I sometimes catch myself doing the same thing, with the same word!
I’ve not investigated this, but in books, I often see written things such as, “then he lighted the candle,” whereas I would say “he lit the candle.” I don’t mean “hung” vs. “hanged,” but simple past tenses for irregular verbs that seem artificially regularized in even low-brow, common literature.
Also, I almost always confuse the past tenses of “lie” and “lay,” even though intellectually I know the difference.
Of course, there’s “gotten” and “got.” They’re both acceptable, although “gotten” is more common in US speech, and “got” in UK speech.
Yeh, the past tense of verbs can be awkward for me too.
Just a bit ago, I wanted to say “drug through the mud.” It took every fiber in my being to say “dragged through the mud.”
Why does that sound wrong to me?! I want to say drug, but I feel that’s wrong too. I’m so confused.
Also, I’ve been pronouncing Uranus as Yer-Ah-Niss, when I’ve said it Your-Anus all my life. I have no idea what triggered the switch.
I also perfer not pronouncing the “t” in often. But I’ve been listening to most of the people around me, and I’d say 90% pronounce the “t”. So now I feel pretentious, but I’m not. It just feels more natural that way. Rolls off the tongue better.
I was pretty buzzed the other day and describing how I was trying to get a skunk out of my kitchen. I had set up a trail of cherries in hopes of enticing him outdoors. I mentioned that I looked up skunks and found out that they eat grubs. The word I was trying to figure out was what a predator does. The word I came up with was predated. The next day when I was not buzzed I remembered that the term was preyed.