Everyone has trouble with English irregular verbs. So why do we have them? And why are all new verbs regular? Related learning activities here: http://englishlanguage.eslreading.org/english/irregularverbs.html Part of a series of articles on the development of the English language found here: http://preview.tinyurl.com/yb52dxs

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