Quercus Books

Word Nerd: Learning English 101

If English isn’t your native language, you certainly will understand what I’m about to discuss. If it is, try and think back to the days of college French and you may just remember the torture of…IRREGULAR VERBS.

Most native English speakers have never had to slog through English language verb tables, because part of learning a language from when you’re little is knowing what sounds right without a second thought.

For this reason, it’s near impossible to have a logical relationship with your own language.

Russians, for instance, will smile sympathetically and tell you “learning Russian is very hard!” without truly understanding how confusing cases are for the English-speaking mind.

Following this, native speakers have little conception of what foreigners find difficult in English. I will help to enlighten you. Look at this table:

Drink     drank     drunk
Drive     drove     driven

 

The first column is the infinitive: the unconjugated verb, which also serves as the present tense.

The middle column is the simple past and the far column is the past participle. In case you don’t know what those things are in context, here are some sentences:

1. I DRINK 50 cups of tea a day, all made for me by my assistant.

2. I DRANK the entire bottle of Yorkshire cider and then fell asleep.

3. I HAVE DRUNK my weight in herbal remedies.

The plain past refers to something that happened before, without a specific time-frame implied, whereas the past participle implies a more recent past.

Now, that might sound straightforward, but these verbs are all IRREGULAR. I will show you why. Look at these REGULAR verbs:

1. I cry/cried/have cried over my terrible manuscript.

2. I torch/torched/have torched my many rejection letters.

3. I submit/submitted/have submitted it to another publisher.

BUT

4. I write/wrote/HAVE WRITTEN the sequel already!

In case you’re a bit slow on the uptake, the last sentence included an irregular verb! Now, I hope you understand that rather flurried grammar lesson. I will leave you with two parting thoughts:

1. I designate 100 points to anyone who can coherently explain the logic behind all this.

2. Contemplate the horror: Dream /dreamed / dreamt/dreamed / dreamt

Sweet dreams and see you next week!

So, we thought we might add a little competition in for you all: We’ve got 3 copies of Matt Fitzgerald’s fantastic Iron War. All you have to do is post your favourite obscure or weird irregular verb. Best 3 verbs by 4pm win!