Past tense: Is it “Dived” or “Dove”

[Pearlman]

Turns out the topic has already been done! Should you use 'dived' or 'dove'?

Also: dive - Simple English Wiktionary

P

 

[Angelo Farina]

Usually I solve these problems saying something like "past year I was diving at Maldives", or "30 years ago, when I did dive in the Diggiri Kandu". No past tense, past tense is boring.
But I am not an English mother-tongue, so take this with a pinch of precaution...

 

[BoundForElsewhere]

googling Diggiri Kandu now.... Cool. I hear the water is getting deeper in the Maldives.

 

[Lorenzoid]

In my mind, “dived” is the abbreviated form of “scuba-dived” or “free-dived.” “Scuba-dove” and “free-dove” sound odd to my ears. So I prefer “dived.”

 

[scubadada]

It's dived

 

[Dan]

Dived it is then.

 

[Kimela]

Is it dived or dove? Yes!

 

[Dan]

English has already have too many irregular verbs. Let’s not add more confusion, please.

It’s hard enough to learn English as a 2nd language. In my 1st language, Indonesian, we don’t have past tense and past perfect tense verbs, just a present tense. We don’t even have third person verb. For example: the words GO, GOES, WENT & GONE is PERGI. That’s it. If the action happens in the past, we just add the time (yesterday, last week, etc.).

It’s a very simple language. No problem with spelling either.

 

[Angelo Farina]

googling Diggiri Kandu now.... Cool. I hear the water is getting deeper in the Maldives.

Dhiggiri Kandu is close to the Dhiggiri Island, a nice resort which was owned, at the time, by Italian Club Vacanze. I was working with them as diving instructor. They did also run Alimatha, also in the Felidhu atoll, quite close to Dhiggiri.
After 30 years away, I went back to Maldives past year, and it was really terrible. Due to high water temperature the coral is dead almost everywhere. It is called "bleaching".
Only in selected spots, cooled by oceanic currents, some live coral survived. A disaster.
Dhiggiri Kandu was a nice pass, with the step around 48m, and nice open caverns just below the step. At the time we did dive in air with a 15l bottle, and decompression bottles hanging below the Dohni, so we could not go much deeper. 60m maximum, and for just a few minutes.
I and my wife are too old now for doing such kind of dives.
Being a pass communicating directly with open ocean, and with current usually flowing in, I hope that the water temperature there did not increase too much, and that those fantastic colors of alcionaires and sponges inside the caverns are still there... But the main attraction were pelagic fish: sharks, manta rays, sea eagles, etc...
I really hope that this incredible spot survived.

 

[kelemvor]

Hmmm, interesting. I've never heard a UK English speaker use dove as the past tense of dive, but this appears to be common for North American English speakers. Would be interesting to find out what term other English speaking nations use. For that matter, which way do people who use English as a second language roll?

This. There's two diverging dialects. Most American english speakers would say dove, and European english speakers say dived.

Both are correct, and you could argue between them indefinitely if you wanted. An European might say they invented the language while an American might say they claimed the language as a spoil of war.

Personally, I use dove. Dived just sounds a bit pretentious to me. "Last week I dived in the ocean with my new set of flippers".