It is one thing to accept a trend toward standardization which seems to move the language toward greater flexibility; and quite another to hasten the corruption of the language by losing touch with important conventions, such as (IMHO) the difference between you and youse.

The "thee and thou" component of this discussion is anachronistic; the words are not in mainstream usage and have not been for decades; they appear in cultural dialects and historical contexts such as the Elizabethan, Amish, and parts of the UK with very long memories!:>)

The maintenance of two forms of past tense, one ending with -t and one with -ed, has always struck me as slightly cumbersome and arbitrary because the contexts in which they are used provide plenty of insight into which is meant; so cleaving to the endings is extra freight in most instances I can think of just now. Burnt vs. burned, learnt vs. learned, (not lurn-Ed) perhaps the archaic skint versus skinned...where's the beef?



A