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Episode 56: The Weak vs The Strong

The History of English Podcast

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What Happened to the Old English Verbs?

The original germanic speakers developed this particular verb ending to indicate past tense, and it proved to be very popular. In old english, there were seven classes or categories of strong verbs. And the verbs within those respective categories behaved in a very predictable manner. So for example, one class of verbs included early version of words like sing, sting, spring and swing. But notice what happens to day? We have sing and sang and spring and spring, but we have sting and stung and swing and swung. Today we just have a simple esent tense form, seing, and a simple past tense form, sang. And it's always sang no matter what the subject is. I

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