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Episode 55: To Be or Not To Be

The History of English Podcast

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How to Make Verbs Negative in Modern English

In old english, the past tense form was ara. This was derived from a completely different into european word which meant to go. Chaucer used a slightly later version of that word, yeda. But during the 14 hundreds, that old English word got a new rival, wendon. Wendon is cognate with and very closely related to wonder and wind. Its original form still exists in the expression to wend one's way. Well, this verb had a pass tense form, which was went. So wehave seen gone before. The main point here is that highly irregular verbs like to be and to go result from the combination of two or more separate verbs at some

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