This article on the Register tells how some Harvard students (yes, from the country that “revised” the spelling used in the English Language) are trying to tell us that a number of our irregular verbs are likely to become obselete.

To back their case, the researchers identified 177 irregular verbs used in Old English and tracked their use over the centuries from Beowulf to Harry Potter via The Canterbury Tales.

They found that the figure had been reduced to 145 by the 14th century, and the current lingo boasts just 98 - a paltry three per cent of all verbs.

The team says that of the 98, 15 will have evolved into regular verbs within the next 500 years. The preterites “very likely” to suffer the ignominious fate are “bade” (bidded) “shed” (shedded), “slew” (slayed), “slit” (slitted), “stung” (stinged) and “wed” (wedded).

Among those most likely to resist are “ate”, “broke”, “bought”, “chose”, “drew” and “drank”.

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This entry was posted by James on Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 4:05 pm and is tagged with and is posted in the category Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.