SNEAKED OR SNUCK?

Uriel   Wed May 03, 2006 9:07 am GMT
I think I mostly use "snuck" myself, although I'm not averse to "sneaked".
Adam   Wed May 03, 2006 9:16 am GMT
"Sneaked" is British and "snuck" is American although, annoyingly, people in Southern England sometimes tend to use "snuck" and it's irritating.
MaintiensLeDroit   Wed May 03, 2006 12:56 pm GMT
>>"snuck" is the equivalent of "thunk". They're joke-words.<<

You're kidding right? To me sneaked sounds like little children's speech and snuck is generally accepted, in my corner of the world, as the correct way of saying it.
US   Wed May 03, 2006 1:17 pm GMT
forget, forgot, forgot

I've forgot


from Wikipedia

''
Verb morphology
See also: the list of irregular verbs
The past tense and past participle of the verbs learn, spoil, spell (only in the word-related sense), burn, dream, smell, spill, leap, and others, can be either irregular (learnt, spoilt, etc.) or regular (learned, spoiled, etc.). British English allow both irregular and regular forms, but the irregular forms tend to be used more often by the British (especially by speakers using Received Pronunciation), and in some cases (learnt, smelt, leapt) are strongly preferred; dreamed is however commoner than dreamt in current British usage. The forms with -ed are preferred by many careful writers of English since they are regular verbs. In American English, the irregular forms are never or hardly ever used (except for leapt and smelt, which are occasionally found). Nonetheless, as with the "tre" words, the t endings are often found in older American texts. (Note that the two-syllable form learnèd /'lɜːnɪd/, usually written simply as learned, is still used as an adjective to mean "educated", or to refer to academic institutions, in both British English and American English.) Finally, the past tense and past participle of dwell and kneel are more commonly dwelt and knelt on both sides of the Atlantic, although dwelled and kneeled are widely used in the U.S. (but not in the UK).
Other verb past tense forms: Americans more frequently use the irregular forms fit, forecast, knit, lit, wed; the weak forms fitted, forecasted, knitted, lighted, wedded are more common in Commonwealth use. The distinction is, however, not rigorous as the Commonwealth forms are also found in American, and both lit and forecast are not only found in Commonwealth English, but are generally considered standard usage.
The past participle gotten is rarely used in modern British English (although it is used in some dialects), which generally uses got, except in old expressions such as ill-gotten gains. Furthermore, according to the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, "The form gotten is not used in British English but is very common in North American English, though even there it is often regarded as non-standard." In North America, most people who use gotten also use got, with gotten emphasising the action of acquiring, and got tending to indicate simple possession (Have you gotten it?, as an example). Interestingly, American English, but not British English, has forgot as a less common alternative to forgotten for the past participle of forget.
The past participle proven is frequently used in American English, although some speakers avoid it, and it remains proved in British English (except in adjectival use; and usage is different in Scots law).
American English further allows other irregular verbs, such as dive (dove) or sneak (snuck), and often mixes the preterite and past participle forms (spring–sprang (U.S. also sprung)–sprung), sometimes forcing verbs such as shrink (shrank–shrunk) to have a further form, thus shrunk–shrunken. These uses are often considered nonstandard; the Associated Press Stylebook in American English treats some irregular verbs as colloquialisms, insisting on the regular forms for the past tense of dive, plead and sneak. Dove and snuck are usually considered nonstandard in Britain, although dove exists in some British dialects and snuck is occasionally found in British and even Australian speech. Both dove and snuck are used in Canada.
By extension of the irregular verb pattern, verbs with irregular preterites in some variants of colloquial American English also have a separate past participle, e.g., "to buy": past tense bought spawns boughten. Such formations are highly irregular from speaker to speaker, or even within idiolects. This phenomenon is found chiefly in the northern U.S., and other areas where immigrants of German descent are predominant, and may have developed as a result of German influence.[1] Even in areas where the feature predominates, however, it has not gained widespread acceptance as "standard" usage.

''
Benjamin   Wed May 03, 2006 4:18 pm GMT
On a sort of related note... I find that I can often tell if people here spend too much time on predominantly American internet forums because they'll often say 'I have gotten' instead of 'I have got'.
Adam   Wed May 03, 2006 7:02 pm GMT
"Sneaked" sounds right.

"He sneaked out of the house at night to escape the annoying American lodger."

Now that sounds perfectly good English.


But:

"He snuck out of the house at night to escape the annoying American lodger."

That doesn't sound right at all. There's just something not quite right saying that way. To me, it's just like saying "That is the bestest meal I ever ate!"
MaintiensLeDroit   Wed May 03, 2006 11:32 pm GMT
>>To me, it's just like saying "That is the bestest meal I ever ate!"<<

Seriously Adam that's like saying that "I took the dog for a walk" sounds like "I have the scariestest cat in the neighbourhood." They have absolutely nothing in common. First of there is the whole matter of took (and snuck) being a verb and scariest[est] (or best[est]) being an adjective.
Incredulous   Thu May 04, 2006 8:53 am GMT
I can't believe that these people actually think "snuck" is acceptable. Yet more evidence that English is no longer spoken on a certain continent.
Incroyable   Thu May 04, 2006 9:42 am GMT
I can't believe that these people actually think "sneaked" is acceptable. Yet more evidence that English is spoken by chunky turd munch monkeys.
MaintiensLeDroit   Thu May 04, 2006 2:51 pm GMT
>>Yet more evidence that English is no longer spoken on a certain continent.<<

I've always been taught that snuck is acceptable and I don't come from America... I'm guessing that is where you are talking about.
Jason   Sun May 07, 2006 5:10 am GMT
OK, it's obvious there's no general agreement or concensus here so let me ask you this:

Which form would an RP speaker normally use or does it also vary among the RP speaking population? The reason I ask is that I happen to be an RP speaker myself so I don't want to spoil my "perfectly wonderful" speech by making some really stupid mistake like using an incorrect past tense. Even the finest, 24-carat RP (as my accent has been described) cannot make up for poor grammar or improper usage.
Rick Johnson   Sun May 07, 2006 7:04 am GMT
<<The reason I ask is that I happen to be an RP speaker myself so I don't want to spoil my "perfectly wonderful" speech by making some really stupid mistake like using an incorrect past tense.>>

Use creep and crept- I think there is concensus on those words!
Guest   Sun May 07, 2006 7:41 am GMT
>>OK, it's obvious there's no general agreement or concensus here so let me ask you this:

Which form would an RP speaker normally use...<<

The average RP speaker would probably know that there is no such word as "concensus", for a start. Try "consensus".
Jacob   Sun May 07, 2006 9:10 pm GMT
I never say "sneaked". It sounds wrong to me, like if someone were to say "swimmed" or "sinked". It's always "snuck", and if you google "snuck" and "sneaked", you will find that the former is much more widespread.
Jason   Sun May 07, 2006 11:19 pm GMT
<<The average RP speaker would probably know that there is no such word as "concensus", for a start. Try "consensus".>>

OK, I'm sorry. I had just returned from a concert when I wrote that last message and my mind was still thinking "concert" and thus I typed "concensus" rather than "consensus" since the first four letters of "concert" are "conc". Yes, it can happen even to an RP speaker when he is typing one thing while thinking about something else.

In any case, you never answered my question.