Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
This use of English -ing is thus cognate with the -ing suffix of Dutch, West Frisian, and the North Germanic languages, and with German-ung. The -ing of Modern English in its participial (adjectival) use comes from Middle English -inge, -ynge, supplanting the earlier -inde, -ende, -and, from the Old English present participle ending -ende.
A masculine ending and feminine ending or weak ending are terms used in prosody, the study of verse form. In general, "masculine ending" refers to a line ending in a stressed syllable; "feminine ending" is its opposite, describing a line ending in a stressless syllable. The terms originate from a grammatical pattern of the French language.
(The regular ending -ed is also devoiced after voiceless consonants in regular verbs, as described under English verbs § Past tense, but this is not now shown in the spelling – for example, the -ed in blessed and whipped is pronounced as a t, and these words were formerly written blest and whipt.
The resulting sound may not always be rounded. The precise phonetic quality varies. It can be heard occasionally in the dialect of the English East Midlands, where words ending in -old can be pronounced /oʊd/. KM Petyt (1985) noted this feature in the traditional dialect of West Yorkshire but said it has died out. [4]
The pronunciation of the past tense ending follows similar rules to those for the third person present tense ending described above: if the base form ends in /t/ or /d/ then a new syllable /ɪd/ or /əd/ is added (as in drifted, exceeded); if the base form ends in an unvoiced consonant sound other than /t/ then the ending is pronounced /t/ (as ...
For a time, almost all words with the -or ending (such as error) were once spelled -our , and almost all words with the -er ending (such as member) were once spelled -re . In American spelling, most of them now use -or and -er, but in British spelling, only some have been reformed.
Words like alms, balm, calm, Chalmers, qualm, palm and psalm now generally have /ɑː/ in the standard accents, while holm and Holmes are homophones of home(s). Some accents (including many of American English) have reintroduced the /l/ in these words as a spelling pronunciation. The word salmon generally retains a short vowel despite the loss ...
(The verbs lay and pay, however, are commonly listed as irregular, despite being regular in pronunciation – their past forms have the anomalous spellings laid and paid.) The present participle/gerund is formed by adding -ing, again with the application of certain spelling rules similar to those that apply with -ed.