this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
990 points (100.0% liked)

cats

23547 readers
749 users here now

Typical internet cats. Videos, pics, memes, and discussion welcome!

Rule 1) Be kind

Rule 2) Follow the lemmy.world rules

other cat communities midwest.social cats

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Holy moly proper use of the regular past tense of sneak?? I haven't seen that on the internet ever. "I sneaked my way into the concert, but I also snuck several beers into the venue."

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Wait, English has two different verbs "to sneak"?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but people will look at you weird if you use sneaked in serious contexts.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I mean, OC implies that "sneaked" and "snuck" have different meanings

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Might be a regional thing, but in the US you only hear snuck unless the person is trying to be cutesy, like pretending to be a cat.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah, so far I've also only heard snuck.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

More than that. One can creep about, or flit stealthily from place to place.

I'm sure there's more.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Nono, those are synonyms of " to sneak". He is saying that sneak has two different past tenses, depending on the meaning.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Oh I understand now that I misunderstood.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Transitive vs intransitive, I guess

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That would be an absolute anomaly in English, as far as I know.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ah yes, because English is such a structured and regular language otherwise

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I think you conflate irregular orthography and irregular grammar or conjugation paradigms.

Like it's pretty regular otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Hmmmm

My German speaking brain (as a second language, my native language is English) is interpreting “my way” and “several beers” as accusative objects, and the repeated use of “into” as clues which would make me want to use the same conjugation for both. I could see “I sneaked into the concert but I also snuck several beers in.”