[PRejto (Peter)]

Originally Posted by Don Pensack

Such a post is intriguing. As a linguistics student, many years ago at the university, the evolution of language was, and has remained, fascinating to me.
The past participle of "prove" used to be "proven". In fact, the past participle of many words had somewhat irregular constructions, e.g. "hung" for the verb "to hang". I even remember "boughten" as the past participle of "to buy" because so many of my early teachers received their educations prior to WWI (it became "bought" about WWII).
The latter half of the 20th century and certainly the first portion of the 21st has seen the "-ed" ending replacing all the older forms. "Proven" has become "proved", and "hung" has become "hanged".
Not all irregular past participles have become simplified. We still use "written" for a letter, and not "writed".
But linguistics people have noticed a very strong trend. One of the pleasures of reading posts on a forum frequented by such a large group is seeing the language evolve.

As for misspellings, who would notice "lite" or "nite"?

Don,

I suppose your tolerance for language "evolution" originates from your academic interests. I find myself somewhat intolerant and have been questioning the reason for such feelings. One trend (just as an example) I notice in Australia is the seeming inability to use the word "are" instead of "is" when the noun is plural. Such as: "There is a lot of people at the park today." Why do I want to scream when I hear this? Is this the evolutionary fate of our language? Will "are" vanish from our vocabulary? My children speak this way at school and their teachers do not correct them. I want to scream! Another favorite (perhaps British in origin?) is the "confusion" over the word "have" and "has," as in "Qantas have fired all their pilots today." While Quantas may be a company composed of many people, the word "Qantas" itself is a singular noun. This usage seems to be rampant in Australia but not in America. I've asked older Australians about this and many agree that it is singular (but not all!), but the younger generation seems oblivious. Why do I care? I think it's because, as has been stated by a few earlier in this thread, we have a desire to be understood clearly, and in turn desire to understand without ambiguity what another person is communicating.
Speaking only for myself, if I read a post filled with errors in writing I usually turn off to the content, and I lose much of my desire to communicate back. Personally, I wouldn't correct a person's grammar - especially in public. I might do so with a close friend in a joking way, but even that can be hazardous! It seems unnecessary to put anyone down in a public forum. One can simply choose not to participate.

Peter