On 30/8/17 6:06 am, Wolf K wrote:
On 2017-08-29 17:03, Ken Blake wrote:
On Tue, 29 Aug 2017 21:38:33 +0100, Â* wrote:

[...]robably because my parents do as well and it's what I have heard
all my life.
I'm also reminded of the obsolete spelling of the past-participle of the
verb "show", as typified by the notice "All tickets must be shewn" on
old
buses. My dad remembers thinking that this was an absurd spelling of
"shown", even when he was growing up in the 1940s.

I think that's just a British spelling. It's never used in the US.

It was spelt thus, actually, into the early 1900s, especially by New
England writers. Its disappearance in current US spelling reminds me of
the disappearance of "practise", a devil of a word, since it was
supposedly a different word than "practice", and one was supposed to
know when to use which spelling. In speech of course there's no
difference at all, which shews you how silly it is to insist on some
spelling variations. They are really class-markers; most rules of
"correct English" are about class, not grammar.

There is a whole series of pairs with c and s, where c is the noun:
advice, prophecy, practice, licence
and s is the verb]
advise, prophesy, practise, license.
Some, like advice/advise sound different, other don't, but the noun/verb
rule remains. Nothing to do with class.



--
Robert B. born England a long time ago;
Western Australia since 1972