From New York City, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.

I'm John McWhorter and what are we going to do this week?

Well, you know what? I want to go back to the past.

Or rather, I want to bring the past into our present.

It's time that we had a nice bowl session on the past tense.

It's a very interesting subject and it plays into something that I'm asked a lot about English,

which is our past forms and how so many people quote unquote get them wrong.

Or you know what I'm going to say, how squishy and variable they are,

how in so many cases we can't really say that there's a right or wrong form.

But we are all human beings.

And to even my ear sometimes, what it sounds like is that somehow people don't seem to quite get

what the proper past forms are.

It's not about proper, it's about flux, which is what language is all about.

But it's neat stuff. So let's take a look at why it is that the past forms seem to be so squishy

and how past really works in a language.

If you're looking for a new podcast, might I recommend our podcast?

Hi, I'm Gabe Dunn and I'm Allison Raskin.

We have a weekly show called Just Between Us where we explore every kind of topic out there

from mental health to sexuality to animal behavior to science.

We love to interview fascinating people about their various expertise.

We also answer listener questions and play a very silly game called hypotheticals.

You're not going to want to miss it, it's unhinged.

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