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10:29PM
Aug-26-08
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Diane
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I am a retired English currently taking a class with many younger people. The other day just before class started a fellow student sent me a text message telling me that she was going to be late and to please tell the instructor. When the instructor called the student’s name I said “Jackie just text-ed (the way I pronoounced it) me and she will be late”. This was met with a great deal of laughter and with the comment that they never knew I could sound so “ghetto”. I laughed too, but asked what the past tense of text was. One girl said it was like asked (pronounced askt), so texted was pronounced text. I shot this down by saying that wanted was pronounced want-ed. It all became very complicated and my own daughter told me I just should have said “I received a text from Jackie…” Of course, she’s probably right but the question remains…is the word “text” such a new verb that we don’t know exactly how to conjugate it yet or is there a correct way to form the past tense?
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6:47AM
Aug-27-08
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martha
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Good question, Diane. I know a lot of people still wonder about this. But “text” has been around as a verb in this sense for at least a decade, and the form you use is quite natural, formed by a natural process. (And if your classmates disagree about turning a noun into a verb, you might ask if they’ve ever “phoned” anyone.)
Btw, you’ll be pleased to know that we’ll be talking about texting in an upcoming show in September. There’s a new book about it by the highly regarded writer David Crystal, and I think it’ll surprise a lot of people, because it says what linguists have been saying for years now: Texting isn’t ruining the English language. Far from it! Fascinating stuff.
In any case, thanks for raising this issue, Diane. (What kind of class are you taking?)
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10:35AM
Aug-29-08
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Diane
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Thanks so much, Martha, for your response. I’ll be looking forward to the upcoming texting episode! In answer to your question, I’m taking a nursing class. I retired last year from 38 years of teaching high school English, a job I truly loved. However, I had one dream left to fulfill, that of becoming a nurse. I retired in June of ‘07 and began nursing school in July ‘07. I’m 61 yeards old and having the time of my life!
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6:17PM
Sep-01-08
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martha
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Diane, that is so incredibly cool! I’m delighted to hear you still love teaching after all that time. I know a lot of teachers can suffer burnout by that point. And I’m certain that doing all that learning in a different field will keep you quite young at heart. No doubt you’re a wonderful role model for your many students.
(Now if we could just come up with a term for “retirees who launch a second career.” We’ve struggled with that one on the show before, and I’m still not convinced we’ve found the right word for this growing phenomenon. Although “encore career” is growing on me. What do you think?)
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2:12PM
Sep-03-08
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Dan Heim
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Yes, congrats Diane! I retired from teaching in 99 (after 25 years) to do the same thing. Not nursing though … educational multimedia in my case. Anyway, I just referred to it as my “second career.” Yeah, I know, descriptive but not colorful. I like “encore career,” but that kinda sounds like you’re just doing more of the same thing, which neither of us are.
So after some thought about a more colorful term for what we are doing, I decided I like “career v.2″ (I’m a geek and it works for me).
Hey Martha, why can’t I seem to register for this forum? The “register” button does nothing. I’m a longtme fan of WWW and would enjoy participating here. Thanks!
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