The death of past tense in speech
Living in the moment is killing our language.
I see it a lot as an editor and it’s hard not to despair. Examples include:
Spit - Suddenly we’re getting ‘I didn’t like the coffee I had yesterday, so I spit it out’. Whatever happened to ‘spat’?
Text - What is common now is ‘I text him yesterday’. Whatever happened to texted? How much time was saved in that process? What’s next? ‘I had sex with her yesterday’ becomes ’I sex her yesterday’?
Perhaps the modern zeitgeist is that all events exist in time simultaneously, so tense has become irrelevant and lies in the same graveyard as spelling and punctuation.
If that’s the case, I have to tell you I’ve become very tense about this. In fact, I’m way past tense.
Yes, along with the demise of the ‘er’ form of the comparative. Now everyone just throws “more” in front of the adverb—"more sad,” “more brave,” etc. It’s making me irritateder every day!
I agree and agreed with your comments. I don't spit or spat - I hope and hoped.