1. (On the side that won the American Revolution we call these parentheses, not brackets.) [These are good old American brackets.] {We call these braces; somehow the Brits and their Dominions use them to hold up their trousers.}
2. I lament the near disappearance from English of great old words like hither and thither and whither, so I appreciate the relative survival of hence, thence, and whence, but the redundant “from whence” just rankles me.
3. If it’s ring/rang/rung, why should it be spring/sprang or sprung/sprung? I learned “sprang” myself. If English is going to preserve Germanic irregular verbs (ringen/rang/gerungen), then we should be consistent in our irregularity.
1. (On the side that won the American Revolution we call these parentheses, not brackets.) [These are good old American brackets.] {We call these braces; somehow the Brits and their Dominions use them to hold up their trousers.}
2. I lament the near disappearance from English of great old words like hither and thither and whither, so I appreciate the relative survival of hence, thence, and whence, but the redundant “from whence” just rankles me.
3. If it’s ring/rang/rung, why should it be spring/sprang or sprung/sprung? I learned “sprang” myself. If English is going to preserve Germanic irregular verbs (ringen/rang/gerungen), then we should be consistent in our irregularity.