Irregular Verbs About the English Language

IRREGULAR VERBS ABOUT THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE/

Perhaps surprisingly all the ‘foreign’ verbs Irregular Verbs are regular. Latin had a big influence on the English lexicon (see here) but not on What are irregular verbs? the grammatical structure of the language Most English verbs follow a simple pattern. The psychologist, Steven Pinker, has an ‘I paint’ becomes ‘I painted/I have painted’ interesting theory. He says that irregular and so on. Irregular verbs do not follow verbs are ‘fossils’ of an Indo-European pre- this or any other rule. ‘I see’ for example, historic language. becomes ‘I saw/I have seen’. This makes The Indo-Europeans wandered across irregular verbs more difficult to learn. Europe and southwest Asia. They spoke According to the linguist, Noam language with a regular rule in which one Chomsky, we are born with a ‘universal vowel replaced another. grammar’: an inherited capacity to learn Over time pronunciation changed. The languages. ‘rules became opaque to children and Small children, for example, learn to eventually died; the irregular past tense speak and understand at an incredible forms are their fossils.’ speed. They have an intuitive mastery of There are now around 180 irregular complex grammatical rules. verbs in English. That may sound a lot – but it is a small fraction of the thousands Illogical of regular verbs. But irregular verbs are This in-built logic makes children heavily used. They make up: instinctively assume that all verbs are regular. That’s why a child might say 70% of all the verbs we use ‘buyed’ instead of ‘bought’ for example. The ten verbs we use most often: Language students also struggle with be, have, do, say, make, go, strange irregular verb endings. Why does take, come, see, get. 'go' become ‘went’? Or ‘get‘ turn into ‘got’? Irregulars can seem like traps set up Learning Irregulars to make life difficult! We need to work hard to memorise an To confuse things further, some verb irregular verb. It takes children years to learn endings are the same in the past and to use ‘spoke’ and not speaked. Some never present. The book you read today is the learn that nobody ever ‘writ’ anything. same as the one you read yesterday. In fact many of the grammatical mistakes So why does English have these commonly made by native speakers – we was, illogical, infuriating words? And why are they done etc – involve irregular verbs. they so important? And yet children have a remarkable capacity to memorise new words. They learn a Fossils? new one every two hours and know an English has borrowed words from many average 60,000 by the age of 13. languages - particularly Latin, French and Decline Greek. Is this imported vocabulary the source of the irregularity? The number of commonly used irregular verbs is declining. Some die of natural causes. Most modern children don’t know the word cleave IRREGULAR VERBS ABOUT THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE/ or that its past is clove. Nor are they likely to come across abide/abode. Other irregulars like dream and learn are Glossary gradually becoming regular. How long can Common - frequent or typical dreamt survive alongside dreamed? As English becomes ever more Declining - reducing or going down international, the simpler verb forms become Familiar - known, recognised more dominant. Fraction - percentage/proportion Despite this there is no danger of irregular verbs disappearing. Even before they Gradually slowly over time learn to read most children can use 80 Intuitive - by instinct irregulars. They may not realise that ‘went’ Lexicon - vocabulary, words originally came from ‘wend’ but nobody over the age of six seriously tries to replace it with Linguist - person who studies language Memorize - learn something by ‘goed’. memory (e.g a phone number) Opaque - not clear, difficult to see or The Future? understand The future is less promising for new irregular verbs. All new verbs in English are regular, including all new noun conversions: I accessed, you emailed. Comprehension Even when an old verb takes a new True or False meaning it uses a regular pattern – the army 1. Irregular verbs are not used officer rung his general but his men ringed the frequently. city. 2. Chomsky believes we are born with For a new irregular verb to survive it must the ability to learn language. offer some familiar pattern in how it works. 3. Children learn language very fast. One of the most recent irregulars is sneak/ 4. Irregular verbs can confuse children snuck, which you find in American English. 5. Imported verbs are usually irregular. In Britain we prefer sneaked but snuck is 6. Most teenagers know more than also logical because it follows the pattern of 50,000 words. strike/struck. 7. Many irregular verbs do not survive. 8. Some irregular verbs eventually become regular. 9. English between non-natives encourages the use of regular verb forms 10. Recent new verbs have nearly all been regular

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