Expression: 'Badly-built shops sank the...'

[Tom]

Hi

Could you please tell me which of the following sentences sounds better to you?

[Alan]

Hi Tom,

Remember that 'sank' is past simple and 'sunk' is past participle so grammatically (1) would have to be correct. That said, I'm not sure that 'sink' is the most suitable word and I would go for 'plunge' as in:

Badly-built shops and rubbish heaps have plunged my house into gloom.

Alan
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English as a Second Language
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[Tom]

[Yankee]

Hi Tom

Both sank and sunk are used in American English for the simple past tense of sink. Here is some additional verification:

http://www.bartleby.com/61/97/S0429700.html
http://www.englishpage.com/irregularverbs/irregularverbs.html
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary_Appendix:Irregular_verbs:English

The same is true of the verb shrink:
shrink/shrank/shrunk -OR- shrink/shrunk/shrunk

Although this is not noted in your link, Tom, you will find it in all three of my links.

Maybe you've heard of the movie called "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids".
.