Quotes & Sayings About Irregular Verbs

Human relations are like the irregular verbs in a number of languages where nearly all verbs are irregular. — Soren Kierkegaard

There are two basic groups of German verbs ... strong and weak. Weak verbs are regular verbs that follow typical rules. Strong verbs are irregular. They don't follow patterns. You deal with strong verbs on your own terms ... Like people, ... The strong ones stand out. The weak ones are the same. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

I spent 20 years doing research on regular and irregular verbs, not because I'm an obsessive language lover but because it seemed to me that they tapped into a fundamental distinction in language processing, indeed in cognitive processing, between memory lookup and rule-driven computation. — Steven Pinker

The top 10 verbs in the English language are all irregular, even though irregular verbs make up only 3 per cent of the language. — Erez Lieberman Aiden

At one stage in the history of English, the past tenses of verbs were marked by a regular vowel change process; instead of "help/helped," we had "help/holp." Over time, -ed became the preferred way to mark the past tense, and eventually the past tense of most verbs was formed by adding -ed. But the old pattern was preserved in verbs like "eat/ate," "give/gave," "take/ took," "get/got" - verbs that are used very often, and so are more entrenched as a linguistic habit (the very frequently used "was/ were" is a holdover from an even older pattern). They became irregular because the world changed around them. — Arika Okrent

If he was trying German irregular verbs on the poor beast," said Clovis, "he deserved all he got. — Saki

There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
From insignificance. — W. H. Auden

English loves to stay out all night dancing with other languages, all decked out in sparkling prepositions and irregular verbs. It is unruly and will not obey - just when you think you have it in hand, it lets down its hair along with a hundred nonsensical exceptions. — Catherynne M Valente

He was just alive," [Gansey] said helplessly. "He just taught us four irregular verbs last week. And you killed him. — Maggie Stiefvater

You wouldn't believe the kind of hate mail I get about my work on irregular verbs. — Steven Pinker

There's nothing quite like a Scotch education. One is left with an irreparable debt. My head is full of irregular verbs still. — Ivor Cutler

Anyone who has tried to learn a foreign language knows only too dearly that languages can be full of pointless irregularities that increase complexity considerably without contributing much to the ability to express ideas. English, for instance, would have losed none of its expressive power if some of its verbs leaved their irregular past tense behind and becomed regular. — Guy Deutscher