How common are "shooken" and "tooken" in spoken speech?

Solution 1:

To add to rjpond's etymological answer, I thought I'd add some frequencies. I am looking for articles on "tooken" and "shooken," and whether they're common in certain AmE dialects (I don't know of any off the top of my head), or what conditions their use, but here's what I have so far and I'll come back to this answer if I find any research.

According to the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), comparing across transcriptions of speech only, "tooken" is used in less than 0.05% of "taken/tooken" tokens and "shooken" is used instead of "shaken" approximately 0.5% of the time.

Now, I'd take these with a grain of salt, as not only were the low-frequency forms in the low double-digits, the COCA says:

Transcripts of unscripted conversation from more than 150 different TV and radio programs (examples: All Things Considered (NPR), Newshour (PBS), Good Morning America (ABC), Today Show (NBC), 60 Minutes (CBS), Hannity and Colmes (Fox), Jerry Springer, etc).

This means they are transcriptions of real speech, but not entirely naturalistic, and don't reflect stigmatized dialectic usages (as "tooken" or "shooken" is likely to be considered).

In terms of the third issue (naturalness), there is one aspect of these texts that does make them somewhat unlike completely natural conversation. That is of course the fact that the people knew that they were on a national TV or radio program, and they therefore probably altered their speech accordingly -- such as relatively little profanity and perhaps avoiding highly stigmatized words and phrases like "ain't got none". ... But no spoken corpus (even those created by linguists with tape recorders in the early 1990s) will be 100% authentic for real conversation -- as long as people know that they're being recorded.

(Emphasis added.)

COCA doesn't link very well, so to find these quotes, from the homepage, click on "large and balanced" to the right to reach the first quote and "See notes" on that page to reach the second."

Solution 2:

The OED notes archaic and dialectal use of "tooken" both as a preterite (meaning "took") and as a past participle (meaning "taken").

For "shooken", it notes only its use as a past participle (meaning "shaken") - although it includes a Middle English variant of the plural preterite form "scæken" (meaning "shook") - the vowel of which isn't close to "oo", but it does show the "-en" ending hasn't always been unique to the participle for that verb either.

For the past participle of "shake", the OED gives these forms:

pa. pple. α. OE sceacen, scacen, scæcen, ME schaken, ( yshaken), s(c)hakun, schake, ME–15 shake, ME i-sake, ME–15 Sc. schakyn, 15–16 Sc. scha(i)kin, 15 Sc. shaikne, shacken, shakken, ME– shaken. β. ME schacked, 15–16 shak'd, shakt, 15 shakte, 16 shak't, 18 dial. shacked, shakked, shak't, 15– shaked. γ. (15 shooken), 16 shooke, 18 dial. shock, shooken, shookt, shu(c)k, -en, Sc. sheuken, shooken, 16– shook

For the simple past (or preterite) of "take", the OED gives forms including

Eng. regional 18– tooken; U.S. regional 18 tucken, 19– tooken.

and offers examples such as:

1887 M. E. M. Davis in Wide Awake Nov. 377 Mars' Jay-bird he tucken sick.

1897 F. T. Jane Lordship 21 He tooken off his coat.

1927 E. C. L. Adams Congaree Sketches xvi. 36 Jube tooken sick, an' he cry like a chile.

1996 New Yorker 19 Aug. 56/3 She tooken up for him even though her child needed correcting.

For the past participle of "take", the OED gives forms including:

lME token, lME tokyn, 15–16 (17– regional) tooken; Eng. regional (Cumberland) 18– tukkan, 19– tocken; U.S. regional (chiefly south.) 18 tucken; Sc. pre-17 tockin, pre-17 tuikin, pre-17 tukin, 18 tucken, 18 tukken, 19– tookin, 19– tuiken.

and there are examples such as

a1450 (▸c1410) H. Lovelich Hist. Holy Grail xlviii. 38 Tho that At thike table were these wardis to presomcioun token there.

1596 T. Nashe Haue with you to Saffron-Walden sig. G3v If thou hadst tooken the paynes of quotations.

1610 J. Donne Pseudo-martyr xii. 353 The Popes haue tooken order..to enact [etc.].

as well as some more recent ones.