Frolicking in the water

When I was having a bath in Sanabria, near Zamora, my girlfriend made me reflect on one interesting English verb: frolic. If you happen not to know this verb, I will explain it to you: it means: 'to play merrily.' Children, for instance, usually frolic in parks. Aside from this, this verb has other sexual connotations that I will not proceed to explain - you can imagine. 

What made me think about this verb was how unusual it was. How many verbs ending in -c in the English language do you know ? Very little. While I kept on thinking, I began to wonder, what will the gerund form of this verb be ? This verb is pronounced [‘frɒlɪk]. However, when adding -ing for the gerund, or -ed for the past, it would lose its final [k] sound. You know that the letters <ce> and <ci> are pronounced [s] in English as in 'city' ['sɪti] or cent [sent]. This is clearly not possible, so as I imagined, these verbs need the letter <k> to keep the phoneme [k] when pronouncing the past. Have a look at my chart below:

INFINITIVE          PAST TENSE     GERUND

frolic                         frolicked               frolicking

mimic                       mimicked              mimicking

panic                        panicked                panicking

traffic                       trafficked               trafficking

picnic                       picnicked               picnicking

You know when at school or at the university we are taught the irregularities when forming the gerund or regular past tenses, this rule is never mentioned (at least to me). The teachers always mention when the final consonant is doubled, or what happens to the final <e> or <y>. Maybe this particularity is not usually mentioned because there are few -and not usual- verbs to follow the aforementioned scheme. I also wondered why this irregularity happened and I came up with a solution (I do not know if it is the correct one, though). 'Frolic', 'mimic', 'panic', 'traffic' and 'picnic' were used as nouns at first. Then, they were transformed into verbs through conversion. Conversion is the process whereby a new word is created by changing its word class. 'Walk' is a noun ('paseo') but through conversion is also the action depicted in the noun ('pasear'). When nouns ending in c- were transformed into verbs, the phoneme and grapheme 'k' became necessary to maintain the original pronunciation of the words [‘frɒlɪkɪɳ] instead of [‘frɒlɪsɪɳ]

Isn't that fascinating ? Well, most of you will find this thing boring, but what I do find fascinating is that after many years of studying and speaking English, I keep discovering new things ! I hope you do the same ! Reflect on the English language and you'll keep learning. 

I'm off to the beach now to keep enjoying this wonderful summer and continue frolicking in the sea of Majorca. If you want to learn some vocabulary about holidays, click here. 

See you soon.