Regular vs. Irregular Verbs

Verbs come in many sizes, shapes, and colors. Today we’re talking about the “regular” and “irregular” varieties. Regular verbs form the past tense by adding the standard “ed”. But those “irregular” guys are the troublemakers — especially for people learning English as a second language. A couple of examples: go, went, has gone (present, past, participle); do, did, has done; and swim, swam, has swum. And there’s no way except memorization to learn the darned things.

Almost every other language uses a simple past tense for all verbs. Be envious! In some Native American languages, the speaker uses a standard verb and points either ahead or over the shoulder to indicate future and past tense. Cool!

Not so with U.S. language. (Why make it easy?) Teachers cause most of the student wailing by assigning a list of “irregulars” to be memorized. And that list is long: more than 200, to be more factual. Look them up on the Web and see how many you know.

You can lead a horse to water. . .

Why make spelling more difficult than it already is? When someone leads a horse to water, it drinks before telling its friends, “Someone led me to water!”

“Probably that lead miner,” responds the friend.
“I heard the leader was a minor, not quite 12 years old.”
“And that makes a difference how?”
“Can a minor be cited for leading a horse to water when the horse was actually led by a lead miner?”

Get it? The verb “to lead” uses the past tense “led”. The noun “lead” refers the the heavy metal. The nouns “miner” and “minor” refer to someone who digs the metal and someone who digs “heavy metal”, respectively! Dig?

Oh yes, don’t overlook the adjective “minor” which sounds like a sour note sometimes.

What is this thing called love?

Where would you place a comma? Depends on your meaning, doesn’t it, love! The Grammar Anarchist loves to play with words. Play along with The Anarchist's Guide to Grammar. You can take it with you on your Kindle or recline under a shade tree and open a book. But rush out now to pick up your copy. Especially if you are a writer too.

Do you “temble” or “tremble”?

If you don’t do crossword puzzles, you may confuse the words tremble (as in earthquake) with temblor, as in… wait for it… earthquake. Both words suggest “shaking”.

A single trip to a good dictionary adds a couple of adjectives, tremulous, as in “trembling, shaking” and temerius, adding the definition “reckless”.

Just for fun, go one step further with tremble and find the trembles, a noun referring to “an infectious tick disease of sheep which causes them to leap about and tremble (shake) violently”.

See what you can discover during a quiet afternoon sitting in the shade with your dictionary?

Gulp! A Wise Brit Wordsmith

 Knowing that English is a world-wide language, the #GrammarAnarchist focuses on U.S. language, which has its own idiosyncrasies. As a word person, I couldn’t resist taking a peek at what is going on here. You may enjoy it too. Check out http://www.worldwidewords.org/ You'll find this:

About World Wide Words

The English language is forever changing. New words appear; old ones fall out of use or change their meanings. World Wide Words tries to record at least some part of this shifting wordscape by featuring new words, word histories, the background to words in the news, and the curiosities of native English speech.

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