2

I recently learnt the the past form of "choose" is a rarely used word in English. (So is "chosen" used in present perfect.) So instead of saying:

"I finally chose the dress for the party"

"I didn't choose appetizer from the menu because my wife chose it for me."

"I haven't chosen the dish yet"

"You didn't choose the right job for you"

"I haven't chosen the place for my vacation yet"

More natural would be:

"haven't decided on the appetizer"

"decide where to go on vacation"

Or are there some other options? What would be most natural way to say those sentences? Do you use the verb "chose" often?

Improve this question

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
0

Pick is often used instead of chose, so you'd more usually say 'you didn't pick the right job'. The party dress sentence is interesting - saying "I finally chose..." suggests that there was a choice of a particular number of dresses, maybe ones you own already, so you've decided between them. If, though, you went to a store and bought a dress, after looking several times at various dresses, you'd say "I finally found rather than chose.

Otherwise decide is often used, exactly as you've given examples already.

As for the appetizer, "I didn't choose..." could be replaced with "I didn't decide on" or "I didn't pick", but "my wife chose it for me" would usually remain the same, though "my wife picked it for me" might also be used.

The sentences you quote are structured merely to demonstrate the difference between chose and choose; they're all accurate, but in reality, there are other ways to say the same thing.

Improve this answer
0
3

Who told you that? Chose is the past tense of choose, and chosen is the past participle. Both are perfectly normal.

Improve this answer
8
  • The macmillan dictionary didn't mark this word as red, and "red words" according to that dictionary are the words that occur in 90% of texts and conversations: macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/chose
    – Peter
    Commented Sep 15, 2013 at 8:51
  • 2
    I think that with choose, just because of its meaning, people are more likely to use the past perfect than the past tense. But it's not a big difference ... It might be that chose occurs in 89% of texts, and chosen occurs in 91% of texts. This would mean that chosen gets one red star, and chose gets none, but it wouldn't mean that people avoid using chose. As Barrie says, people use it.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Sep 15, 2013 at 11:28
  • However, I'm afraid you misunderstood the concept of Macmillan's word marking. If the word is black it means that it occurs in less than 10% of the texts.
    – Peter
    Commented Sep 15, 2013 at 12:34
  • 2
    I'll bet that 'seventy-nine' occurs in less than 10% of the texts. But it is sometimes just the right word.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Sep 15, 2013 at 13:52
  • 1
    From Macmillan: "90% of the time, speakers of English use just 7,500 words in speech and writing. These words appear in red, and are graded with stars. One-star words are frequent, two-star words are more frequent, and three-star words are the most frequent." I think what this means is that if you know 7,500 words, you will know 90% of the words in a sample of text. (This webpage says 6000 words is enough, but I'm sure it depends on which texts you look at, and whether you count choose, chose, chosen as one word or three.)
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Sep 15, 2013 at 17:53
0

Your premise is wrong. The Macmillan dictionary you are looking at does not put stars on past and past perfect verb forms unless they consider that the past perfect tense also has an independent definition as an adjective (or other part of speech). Thus, chosen has a star because it's used an adjective, but chose does not.

Improve this answer
1
  • I didn't know that. That explains a lot. Thank you very much for pointing that out.
    – Peter
    Commented Sep 16, 2013 at 18:47

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .