Tuesday 18 January 2011

Murder in Mykonos and a shining example

I shined my shoes; he shone a light on me; her beauty shone and the sun shined brightly.

Correct usage
Whilst opinions differ on what constitutes ‘correct’ usage of ‘shined’ and ‘shone’ as the past tense of the verb shine, the simple fact is that all the examples quoted above are perfectly acceptable, although individual speakers will, of course, have their own preferences. But what, you may ask, has this got to do with murder in Mykonos?

Dastardly deeds
Returning recently from an all-too-brief trip to Athens and Aegina, Ann and I made our customary inspection of the bookstands at the airport and my eye fell on the cover of a thriller entitled ‘Murder in Mykonos’ by Jeffrey Siger. Having never heard of either the author or the local publisher (aiKaterini Lalaouni Editions) I decided the book would make a nice memento of our trip, especially as it would probably not be so readily available elsewhere. A straightforward whodunit nicely peppered with local colour and an obvious passion for the Greek islands and their legends, this damsel-in-distress detective story made light bedtime reading and was quickly digested. Indeed, it would not be a subject for comment here if it were not for the fact that the tale itself involved a generous helping of underground tunnels, disused mines and dastardly doings at night time.


Shining a light 
Needless to say, our heroic detective makes repeated use of his flashlight, which he frequently directs toward the objects of his attention:

He shined his light on the floor by the wall (p 229)
He shined his flashlight against his chest, so Tassos could see his face. (p 333)
He shined his light on the rocks scattered by the door. (ibid)

So  many of these occurrences in fact, that I began to ponder the use of ‘shined’ as a past participle of the verb ‘to shine.’ Siger, a native American who has lived on Mykonos for some 25 years, is quite consistent in his use of the regular form of the past tense when the verb takes a direct object and of course, there is nothing wrong with this. Why then, did something niggle at the back of my mind each time I read a sentence such as the ones above? Why, for that matter, would I have never written such a sentence myself?

It would be all too easy to assume that as a native speaker of British English, I might say ‘he shone his torch,’ whilst an American would say ‘he shined his flashlight.’ Easy, but quite wrong. First of all, I would probably use ‘flashlight’ in an international context too, since I generally want to be understood. And whilst I would not normally sway from my instinctive tendency to use ‘shone’ in this context, it is not a simple matter of a US/UK divide. It is much more complicated than that. It has something to do with the family silver and something to do with the beauty of fractals... and I'll explain why in my next post.

Links
Murder in Mykonos
The Fractal Approach to Teaching English as a Foreign Language

1 comment:

  1. Irregular verbs become regular over time if their use diminishes and younger generations who are not as familiar with the word simply assign it the default ‘ed’ ending. So ‘shone’ is a bit more of antiquated than ‘shined’.

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