Once and for all deal with irregular verbs in English
English learners sooner or later encounter irregular verbs: at least hundreds of verbs that are necessary in everyday life, hated by at least three forms. And all these three forms need to cram, cram, cram! Is English without them can not do? And in general, why is there no irregular verbs in Russian, but in English? Is there any way to do without them? To answer all these questions, we need to refer to the history of the language.
Most of the most common English verbs and the top ten most frequently used verbs are irregular. There are about 200 commonly used verbs in English, and if all verbs with prefixes are taken into account, then even more (for example, understand / misunderstand ).
Each irregular verb has two forms: a past tense and a past participle form. It is not difficult to imagine what foreign students, especially native non-Germanic languages, have to do. For example, in our native Russian there are no such perversions for the formation of the past tense, and despite the fact that each Russian easily operates with hundreds of verbs like “come,” “leave,” “go”, learning English irregular verbs invariably becomes a nightmare for every student. . Why did they come up with?
English belongs to the West German language group. Historically, in all Germanic languages the verbs were divided into two large groups: strong and weak (although the term was later introduced by the German philologist Jacob Grimm). Strong verbs changed form by changing the vowel in the root - remember the English verb begin-began-begun . This change is denoted by the term "ablaut" and may be familiar to those who have learned German. The past tense of weak verbs was the so-called “tooth” suffix: in English -, which then became -th, and now we know it as the ending -ed. There are, of course, exceptions, when the strong verb takes a weak suffix or has its own form at all, but mostly the verbs follow the rule.
Germanic languages originate from the pro-German. In this ancestral language, strong verbs were considered correct. Over time, the vowels in the roots of strong verbs became increasingly different, but these variations were always quite predictable, and from the infinitive one could confidently say what the verb would be in the past tense. Thus, in the pro-Germanic language, seven classes of strong verbs were distinguished, and the same system almost unchanged changed the main Germanic languages: Gothic, Old English, Old High German and Old Norse.
In Old English, the verbs have undergone some changes, but seven classes of strong verbs still exist. We teach them as irregular verbs, although they are no longer divided into classes. However, if you know about the existence of classes, you can make your life much easier. Verbs of one class rhyme and have a general alteration algorithm, so instead of memorizing a list of verbs alphabetically, as is usual in schools, you can learn them by rhyming groups.
British philologist Henry Smith, studying the ancient languages, designated classes according to numbers and principles of changing vowels at the root. Consider the verbs by its classification.
The first class of strong verbs is still well traced in modern English. The second form of these verbs is formed from the old form of the past tense, the difference goes only on the singular or plural number (now the past tense form no longer carries the category of the number).
The most common first class verbs are: bite, drive, hide, ride, rise, shine, slide, stride, strike, strive, thrive, write . All of them are conjugated in a similar way: bite - bit - bitten, rise - rose - risen, write - wrote - written .
The second class of strong verbs is rather small. It includes unusual forms of the following verbs (literally irregular irregular): choose (chose, chosen), cleave (clove, cleft), fly (flew, flown), freeze (froze, frozen) and shoot (shot, shot) . The latter, as you can see, has its third form: shot , not shotten . The verb bid , which is now the same in all three forms, belongs to the same class. There used to be the verb forlese , which itself is now obsolete, but its third form forlorn is still in use.
The third class is still the most numerous. A feature of the class is the fact that some verbs still have two forms of past tense. Officially, one is used, the second is considered dialect or outdated. For convenience, all verbs of the third class are divided into subgroups:
• Ending to the sonor, and most often the second form in the root has the letter “a”: begin, drink, ring, run, shrink, sing, sink, spring, stink, swim . Many verbs have a similar pattern: begin - began - begun, drink - drank - drunk .
• Ending to a sonor, but the second form has “u” or “ou” at its root: bind, find, fling, grind, sling, slink, spin, sting, string, swing, wind . Scheme: bind - bound - bound, grind - ground - ground .
• Ends with “ll”: swell (swelled, swollen) .
• With a preserved Germanic “h” at the root: fight (fought, fought) .
• Possible borrowing from Old Norse fling and similar in forms of cling, ring, string . Scheme: fling - flung - flung, cling - clang - clung .
A characteristic feature of the fourth class of strong verbs is the letter n in the third form. Although, of course, it was not without exception. The fourth class includes verbs break, bear, get, shear, speak, steal, swear, tear, tread, wake, weave . Scheme: break - broke - broken, speak - spoke - spoken . The exception was the verb come (came, come) .
The verbs get, speak, tread and weave historically belonged to the fifth grade, and the verbs wake, swear to the sixth grade. But over time, they moved to the fourth grade, so you can study them all together, because the forms they rhyme. For example, wake - woke - woken, swear - swore - sworn .
Verbs of grades 5-7 have no uniformity and it is better to teach them in conjunction with verbs of other classes, finding them rhyme.
This includes the verbs eat, give, lie, see, sit, bid, forbid . They are conjugated according to the following scheme: give - gave - given, eat - ate - eaten, lie - lay - lain .
The sixth class also has no obvious logic in the forms. This class includes verbs shake, take, forsake, stand, draw, shape, shave, slay, stand . The conjugation scheme is as follows: shake - shook - shaken, take - took - taken .
This class includes the following verbs: fall, hang, hold, throw, beat, blow, grow, know . These verbs are conjugated differently: fall - fell - hang, hang - hung - hung . But there is a chain of rhyming verbs: throw - threw - thrown, grow - grew - grown, blow - blew - blown, know - know - known .
There is also a group of verbs that have become strong, but do not belong to any class: d ig, dive, sneak, spit, stick, strike . Each of them has its own conjugation: dig - dug - dug, dive - dove - dived, sneak - sneacked / snuck - sneaked, spit - spat - spat, stick - stuck - stuck, strike - struck - struck .
First of all, you need to understand that each student has his own speed of learning irregular verbs. If your memory is not very tenacious, do not think that you can quickly master all forms. Teach them gradually and fit into context. First, learn the most important and most frequently used irregular verbs: be, do, go, have, make . Without the first two in general at first nowhere, and the rest are much more common, as you will see below.
As we have said, you can rhyme similar verb forms. Then the following subgroups are obtained:
Divided into subgroups:
Do not forget that learning should be interesting. You can play memorization of irregular verbs, for example, the wheel of verbs from the Macmillan publisher or the pair game from Quia.
And if you like to sing, you can learn a Fluency MC song about irregular verbs and remember the forms of a dozen verbs at once.
Readers of the blog give a coupon for 500 rubles for the purchase of a subscription, which includes 8 types of training and weekly mailings about English grammar and vocabulary - "Vitaminki" and "Buns".
And for unlimited and perpetual access to all features of the site there is an “All Inclusive” tariff (the discount does not apply).
The story of the appearance of irregular verbs
Most of the most common English verbs and the top ten most frequently used verbs are irregular. There are about 200 commonly used verbs in English, and if all verbs with prefixes are taken into account, then even more (for example, understand / misunderstand ).
Each irregular verb has two forms: a past tense and a past participle form. It is not difficult to imagine what foreign students, especially native non-Germanic languages, have to do. For example, in our native Russian there are no such perversions for the formation of the past tense, and despite the fact that each Russian easily operates with hundreds of verbs like “come,” “leave,” “go”, learning English irregular verbs invariably becomes a nightmare for every student. . Why did they come up with?
English belongs to the West German language group. Historically, in all Germanic languages the verbs were divided into two large groups: strong and weak (although the term was later introduced by the German philologist Jacob Grimm). Strong verbs changed form by changing the vowel in the root - remember the English verb begin-began-begun . This change is denoted by the term "ablaut" and may be familiar to those who have learned German. The past tense of weak verbs was the so-called “tooth” suffix: in English -, which then became -th, and now we know it as the ending -ed. There are, of course, exceptions, when the strong verb takes a weak suffix or has its own form at all, but mostly the verbs follow the rule.
Germanic languages originate from the pro-German. In this ancestral language, strong verbs were considered correct. Over time, the vowels in the roots of strong verbs became increasingly different, but these variations were always quite predictable, and from the infinitive one could confidently say what the verb would be in the past tense. Thus, in the pro-Germanic language, seven classes of strong verbs were distinguished, and the same system almost unchanged changed the main Germanic languages: Gothic, Old English, Old High German and Old Norse.
In Old English, the verbs have undergone some changes, but seven classes of strong verbs still exist. We teach them as irregular verbs, although they are no longer divided into classes. However, if you know about the existence of classes, you can make your life much easier. Verbs of one class rhyme and have a general alteration algorithm, so instead of memorizing a list of verbs alphabetically, as is usual in schools, you can learn them by rhyming groups.
British philologist Henry Smith, studying the ancient languages, designated classes according to numbers and principles of changing vowels at the root. Consider the verbs by its classification.
Classification of irregular verbs
I. Conjugation as a “drive”
The first class of strong verbs is still well traced in modern English. The second form of these verbs is formed from the old form of the past tense, the difference goes only on the singular or plural number (now the past tense form no longer carries the category of the number).
The most common first class verbs are: bite, drive, hide, ride, rise, shine, slide, stride, strike, strive, thrive, write . All of them are conjugated in a similar way: bite - bit - bitten, rise - rose - risen, write - wrote - written .
Ii. Conjugate like choose
The second class of strong verbs is rather small. It includes unusual forms of the following verbs (literally irregular irregular): choose (chose, chosen), cleave (clove, cleft), fly (flew, flown), freeze (froze, frozen) and shoot (shot, shot) . The latter, as you can see, has its third form: shot , not shotten . The verb bid , which is now the same in all three forms, belongs to the same class. There used to be the verb forlese , which itself is now obsolete, but its third form forlorn is still in use.
Iii. Conjugation like bind
The third class is still the most numerous. A feature of the class is the fact that some verbs still have two forms of past tense. Officially, one is used, the second is considered dialect or outdated. For convenience, all verbs of the third class are divided into subgroups:
• Ending to the sonor, and most often the second form in the root has the letter “a”: begin, drink, ring, run, shrink, sing, sink, spring, stink, swim . Many verbs have a similar pattern: begin - began - begun, drink - drank - drunk .
• Ending to a sonor, but the second form has “u” or “ou” at its root: bind, find, fling, grind, sling, slink, spin, sting, string, swing, wind . Scheme: bind - bound - bound, grind - ground - ground .
• Ends with “ll”: swell (swelled, swollen) .
• With a preserved Germanic “h” at the root: fight (fought, fought) .
• Possible borrowing from Old Norse fling and similar in forms of cling, ring, string . Scheme: fling - flung - flung, cling - clang - clung .
Iv. Conjugation like “bear”
A characteristic feature of the fourth class of strong verbs is the letter n in the third form. Although, of course, it was not without exception. The fourth class includes verbs break, bear, get, shear, speak, steal, swear, tear, tread, wake, weave . Scheme: break - broke - broken, speak - spoke - spoken . The exception was the verb come (came, come) .
The verbs get, speak, tread and weave historically belonged to the fifth grade, and the verbs wake, swear to the sixth grade. But over time, they moved to the fourth grade, so you can study them all together, because the forms they rhyme. For example, wake - woke - woken, swear - swore - sworn .
Verbs of grades 5-7 have no uniformity and it is better to teach them in conjunction with verbs of other classes, finding them rhyme.
V. Conjugation as “give”
This includes the verbs eat, give, lie, see, sit, bid, forbid . They are conjugated according to the following scheme: give - gave - given, eat - ate - eaten, lie - lay - lain .
Vi. Conjugation like “shake”
The sixth class also has no obvious logic in the forms. This class includes verbs shake, take, forsake, stand, draw, shape, shave, slay, stand . The conjugation scheme is as follows: shake - shook - shaken, take - took - taken .
VII. Conjugation like “fall”
This class includes the following verbs: fall, hang, hold, throw, beat, blow, grow, know . These verbs are conjugated differently: fall - fell - hang, hang - hung - hung . But there is a chain of rhyming verbs: throw - threw - thrown, grow - grew - grown, blow - blew - blown, know - know - known .
There is also a group of verbs that have become strong, but do not belong to any class: d ig, dive, sneak, spit, stick, strike . Each of them has its own conjugation: dig - dug - dug, dive - dove - dived, sneak - sneacked / snuck - sneaked, spit - spat - spat, stick - stuck - stuck, strike - struck - struck .
How to use it all?
First of all, you need to understand that each student has his own speed of learning irregular verbs. If your memory is not very tenacious, do not think that you can quickly master all forms. Teach them gradually and fit into context. First, learn the most important and most frequently used irregular verbs: be, do, go, have, make . Without the first two in general at first nowhere, and the rest are much more common, as you will see below.
As we have said, you can rhyme similar verb forms. Then the following subgroups are obtained:
Verbs that do not change in all three forms
Bet, burst, cast, cost, cut, fit, hit, hurt, let, put, quit, set, shut, split, spread.
Verbs with –n in the third form
Divided into subgroups:
1) With the letter “o” in the second and third form: break, choose, forget, freeze, get, speak, steal, tear, wake, wear . For example, break - br o ke - br o ken, choose - ch o se - ch o sen .
2) With the letter “o” only in the second form: drive, rise, ride, write . For example, drive - dr o ve - driven, ride - r o de - ridden .
3) C –ew in the second form and –own in the third: blow, fly, grow, know, throw . For example, blow - bl ew - bl own , fly - fl ew - fl own . As an exception, you can include the verb draw (drew, drawn) .
4) Others with the letter “n” in the third form: bite, hide, eat, fall, forbid, forgive, give, see, shake, take . For example, forbid - forbade - forbidde n , hide - hid - hidde n .
Verbs in which the long sound [i:] changes to short [e]
Keep, sleep, feel, bleed, feed, meet, lead . The scheme is: keep - k e pt - k e pt, sleep - sl e pt - sl e pt .
Verbs that change the pronunciation of the digraph “ea”
Deal, dream, mean, read, hear according to the scheme: deal - d ea lt - d ea lt, dream - dr ea mt - dr ea mt (according to the classic British version).
Verbs in which the sound [i] changes to the sound [ʌ]
Dig, stick, spin, sting, swing . The scheme is as follows: sting - st u ng - st u ng, dig - d u g - d u g .
Only two verbs with the change –ell -> -old
S ell - s old - s old , t ell - t old - t old .
Verbs with the combination –aught / –ought in the second and third forms
Bring, catch, fight, seek, teach, think in everyone’s favorite and incomprehensible way of reading: bring - br ought - br ought , teach - t aught - t aught . This combination is read as a long [o].
Verbs with “a” in the second form and “u” in the third
Begin, drink, ring, shrink, sing, sink, spring . Scheme: begin - beg a n - beg u n, shrink - shr a nk - shr u nk .
Do not forget that learning should be interesting. You can play memorization of irregular verbs, for example, the wheel of verbs from the Macmillan publisher or the pair game from Quia.
And if you like to sing, you can learn a Fluency MC song about irregular verbs and remember the forms of a dozen verbs at once.
For those who want to pump English
Readers of the blog give a coupon for 500 rubles for the purchase of a subscription, which includes 8 types of training and weekly mailings about English grammar and vocabulary - "Vitaminki" and "Buns".
And for unlimited and perpetual access to all features of the site there is an “All Inclusive” tariff (the discount does not apply).
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/409629/