Despite my fascination with words and the ability to express whatever I'm thinking with words in the English language, there are some things that I don't understand. My particular area of intrigue concerns past participles - mainly, why some past participles are allowed to be words...the biggest pet peeve I have is the word "dived." Apparently it's an acceptable word to signify the past tense of "dive," but come on. It just sounds like you have an elementary school education if you're going around telling people you dived into the pool. It's comparable to "runned" or "swimmed." It just sounds like it really shouldn't be a word. Then there are the past participles for which multiple exist - leaped/leapt, dreamed/dreamt, and sang/sung. Why can't things just be simple?
But, as much as things don't make sense and they should be a different way, sometimes things are funny when they don't make sense. Take for example a couple of ironies of the English language...one cannot claim modesty and retain it at the same time (that is to say, you can't say "I'm modest" without shedding modesty for that sentence). Similarly, one cannot call someone else condescending without appearing condescending themselves. I think that's really cool, the way those work out.
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