# The highest percentage of irregular verbs



## JLanguage

I'm looking for the top 5 or 10 or something around that.

Thanks,
-Jonathan.


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## Anne345

Latin 924   
Italian over 400   
English 283   
German 170   
Dutch Over 300-350   
French 81   
Spanish 46   
Welsh 11   
Finnish >=4 + 4 
Japanese >=5 
Afrikaans 2 
Chinese 1  
Turkish 0   
Esperanto 0 
Latvian 3 

(Wikipedia) 
They forgot ancient greek !


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## Mutichou

Only 81 in French?
Are verbs from the "troisième groupe" considered as irregular?


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## Outsider

Anne345 said:
			
		

> (Wikipedia)
> They forgot ancient greek !


And Portuguese.

 A warning to *JLanguage*: the notion of 'irregular verb' is not as easy to define as you might think. Read this.


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## diegodbs

Parece ser que hay unos 500 verbos irregulares en español, aunque la mayoría de estos verbos son poco usados o incluso desconocidos para la mayoría de los que hablamos español.


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## Anne345

Les verbes irréguliers français, dans les 3 groupes, mais pas tout le 3ème groupe ! 

http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/French/Grammar/Verbs/index.html


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## alby

I think that Portuguese has around 1000 irregular verbs...or more!?

Nataša!


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## Outsider

Counting verbs is also tricky. For example, _pôr_ can be considered an irregular verb, in Portuguese, and there are many compounds built from it with prefixes, such as _compor_, _repor_, _dispor_, _supor_, and conjugated the same way. Shall we count all of them as variations on a single irregular paradigm, or do we count each of the compounds as a separate irregular verb?...


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## Hakro

^
In Finnish there's a different problem. There are only a few _totally_ irregular verbs, but as there are at least twenty different conjugations it's hard to tell which verb is irregular.


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## Whodunit

What about Arabic? I'm sure the word "qara2a" (قرأ) could be considered irregular.


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## amikama

As for Hebrew, due to its highly complex verb system it's hard to speak of irregular verbs _per se_. The verbs are grouped into various groups according to their conjugation patterns, but the Hebrew grammarians don't divide them into "regular verbs" and "irregular verbs". However, few verbs (such as לקח and נתן) show special conjugation patterns and thus maybe they could be considered as "truly irregular verbs".


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## Josh_

Whodunit said:
			
		

> What about Arabic? I'm sure the word "qara2a" (قرأ) could be considered irregular.


Arabic is like Hebrew in that the verbs are grouped into categories according to conjugation patterns, and all the verbs with group conjugate the same. So I don't believe there are any irregular verbs.

An another note


> English 283


English only has 283 irregular verbs? That almost seems hard to believe. I always thought there were a lot more.


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## JLanguage

Josh Adkins said:
			
		

> English only has 283 irregular verbs? That almost seems hard to believe. I always thought there were a lot more.


 
It seems there are quite a few more than that:


> Englishpage.com's Irregular Verb Dictionary for English learners contains over 370 irregular verbs used in modern English. To view our Extended Irregular Verb Dictionary, which contains over 470 verbs including rare and antiquated forms.


From chart


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## Bienvenidos

Farsi has no irregular verb _endings_, but nearly all verbs have irregular stems. Thus, it's very hard to learn the language, since there is no concrete way to forum the conjugations from the infinitive.

Some examples: (no irregular endings, underlined)
*To eat*
*Infinitive: khordan*
*I eat: Muh meehorum*
(it looks nothing like the infinitive!)

*To go*
*Infinitive: ruftun*
*I go: Muh meerum*

*To sing*
*Infinitive: hondun*
*I sing: Muh meehonum*

*To wash*
*Infinitive: Shushtun*
*I wash: Muh meeshooum*

*To hit*
*Infinitive: Zudun*
*I hit: Muh meezunum*

Of course, you can see that there is a *mee* at the beginning of most verbs, but it's not that simple, unfortunately. Just thought it would help to mention it!

Saludos y Suerte
*Bienvenidos*


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## JLanguage

^
Once you have the stem, can you conjugate the verb easily?


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## Bienvenidos

Hi JLanguage,

I'm sorry for such a late reply. If you know the stem, the rest of the conjugation is regular. However, the problem is remembering the stem, because it is *not the same in all tenses! The endings however, are the same throughout all tenses (with some exceptions).*

*So all the endings are basically regular (the same!) in all tenses, but all the stems are different. Farsi is the opposite of languages like Spanish, which keep the stem but change the ending.*

For example:

The verb to eat: *khordun*


PRESENT
I - *míkhorum*
You - *míkhorí*
She/he/it - *míkhora*
We - *míkhorím*
You all - *míkhorín*
They - *míkhorun*

PRETERITE PAST (SIMPLE PAST)
I - *khordum*
You - *khordí*
She/he/it - *khord (This is the only different one, ending-wise)*
We *- khordím*
You all - *khordín*
They - *khordun*

As you can see, the endings basically stay the same

*um
í
a
ím
ín
un*

But the stems change a lot.  Hope this helps! Again, sorry for the late response.

*Bien*


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## demoore

Chinese 1???
Wich verb is it? As chinese verb do not need to be conjugate!!!


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## Whodunit

From Wikipedia: 


> 有 _yǒu_ forms its negative with 没 _méi_ rather than with 不 _bù_ in Mandarin and has a separate negative form 冇 _mou_ in Cantonese


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## demoore

What do you mean by irregular verbs?Concerning the 没 and the 不 it's not that simple. Both of them can be used with most of the verb.- 我不去 : I don't go- 我没去 : I did not go.


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## lazarus1907

Anne345 said:
			
		

> Spanish 46   !


There are *3104* verbs registered in the RAE (34%) which don't follow a strict regular pattern, but many of them are not very used, or they belong to some conjugation patterns which are not hard to remember.


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## Istriano

^
Compared to Portuguese, Spanish has so many irregular verbs. So I think 34% is a fair number for Spanish.
I do consider Spanish stem changing verbs irregular since their present forms are not predictable from the infinitive.
Furthermore, many Spanish verbs have irregular gerund, and past simple.

Many Portuguese irregular verbs are predictable (*e*ir verbs have -i- in 1st person indicative, and in present subjunctive),
so _servir _is a predictable irregular verb (eu sirvo, tu serves...), but _agredir _is unpredictable (_eu agrido, tu agrides_)...

For practical reasons, I would classify Spanish _sentir _as unpredictable (irregular), but Portuguese _sentir _as predictable (regular).


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## gerekenler

these numbers are wrong.for example in turkish
present progressive
To say:de-mek
İ am saying=Diyorum.
to eat:ye-mek
i am eating an apple.=Elma yiyiyorum.
that's all i think


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## Gavril

Anne345 said:


> English 283



I don't know if the ablauting verbs in English (_take_/_took_, _speak_/_spoke_, etc.) should be considered automatically irregular. Ablaut (in English and the other Germanic languages) is a system with its regular patterns and exceptions, just like the "weak" past tense (-_ed_).



> Finnish >=4 + 4



I wonder what this list (which may have been updated/revised in the past 9 years) meant by "+ 4".

There are several verbs that are often irregularly shortened in spoken Finnish, but not in the standard written language: for example, _tulla_ "to come", colloquial _tuun _"I am coming" (standard _tulen_); _mennä _"to go", colloquial _meen _"I'm going" (standard _menen_) and _tietää _"to know", _tien _"I know" (standard _tiedän_). Did the list factor these examples into its count?


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## M Mira

demoore said:


> What do you mean by irregular verbs?Concerning the 没 and the 不 it's not that simple. Both of them can be used with most of the verb.- 我不去 : I don't go- 我没去 : I did not go.


I agree with this. If negation is a criterion that the creator used, there'd be at least 2 in Chinese, as neither 不有 and 沒要 are unacceptable.

And what are the criteria? Are all 4-stem verbs in Latin considered irregular? Or only ones like volo and fero are? Japanese, Korean, and IIRC Turkish have lots of irregular transitive-intransitive verb alternations, why don't they count?


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## rur1920

I wonder whether in Russian there are regular verbs; this point is better to leave to learners to decide. Consonant shifts have made the situation very complicated. Actually, even natives argue over the correct forms of some verbs; there are also verbs that lack certain forms in the standard language (most often the first person singular form), though actually people invent such forms anyway while using the language, sometimes in accordance with the etymological paradigm, sometimes not.


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## Rallino

gerekenler said:


> these numbers are wrong.for example in turkish
> present progressive
> To say:de-mek
> İ am saying=Diyorum.
> to eat:ye-mek
> i am eating an apple.=Elma yiyiyorum.
> that's all i think



yiyiyorum?  You have one too many yi's there: _yiyorum_.

Turkish has a total of 19 irregular verbs. 2 of them are _yemek_ and _demek_ as you said.
The remaining 13 are irregularly conjugated in the _aorist tense_. Compare the verbs _solmak _and _olmak_: _sol*ar*_ and _ol_*ur*. Normally, one-syllabled vers should take the _-er_ ending (_gider, yapar, satar, içer_) and pluri-syllabled ones should take the _-ir_ ending (_konuşur, atılır, yapılır_). However, 13 one-syllabled verbs take the _-ir_ ending too (_gelir, vurur, ölür, alır, etc._)

Also, in a few tenses: _gitmek, tatmak, gütmek, etmek_ (and the verbs that combine with _-etmek_), the _t_ softens into _d_. For example, _ta*d*ıyorum_. Notice that we don't do it with other verbs. Compare _tatmak_ with _atmak_: _ta*d*ıyorum_ / _a*t*ıyorum_.


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## ashy0107

Few members here claiming that there are around 470 irregular verbs in English. But in reality, there are around 638 English irregular verbs. This entire massive list of irregular verbs has been curated here:
English Irregular Verbs List: Complete 638 with Present, Past and Participle Forms


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## Dymn

Counting vocabulary has always been a tad tricky in my opinion. If English has 638 and not 470 irregular verbs, does this give us any real information? I don't think so. Collecting all the words of a language is simply impossible, and sometimes you have to sort them. Is every word uttered when speaking English an English word? When is a loanword accepted? This is even more difficult with languages like English that are spoken in lots of different situations throughout the world and have no official language regulator.

And even if we somehow gathered all the words in a language, would it be of any significance if we attributed the same weight to _be_, and say, _atslip_? That's why I find the statistics showing that in English there are more borrowings from Latin and French than native Germanic words completely misleading. Because people would think that any time they stumble upon an English text, Romance words will be the majority. But, if, for instance, we analyse my first paragraph, we find out that I have written more Germanic than Romance words:



Spoiler: Romance words in the first paragraph



_Counting vocabulary has always been a tad tricky in my opinion. If English has 638 and not 470 irregular verbs, does this give us any real information? I don't think so. Collecting all the words of a language is simply impossible, and sometimes you have to sort them. Is every word uttered when speaking English an English word? When is a loanword accepted? This is even more difficult with languages like English that are spoken in lots of different situations throughout the world and have no official language regulator._
Romance: 21 (24%)
Germanic: 68 (76%)



That's why we should count *frequency*. For instance, if we consider the first 500 words of this list, 70% of them are Germanic, but the percentage gets even larger (up to 91%) when we weigh them by their frequency. That's because Germanic words are always the most common. The first Latinate word (_people_) appears at the 62nd place, and there are only 4 Romance borrowings in the first 100.


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## apmoy70

Anne345 said:


> Latin 924
> ...
> (Wikipedia)
> *They forgot ancient greek !*


According to my lexicon of basic irregular verbs in Ancient Greek, they are 219.
A couple of interesting examples:

*«Ἀγορεύω» ăgŏre̯úō* --> _to speak in the assembly, proclaim_ (Present indicative).
The verb borrows its Aorist, Perfect, and Pluperfect tenses from «ἔπω» (which has itself suppletive Perfect and Pluperfect forms) thus:
Aorist indicative: *«εἶπον» e̯îpon*, Perfect indic.: *«εἴρηκα» e̯írēkă*, Pluperfect indic.: *«εἰρήκειν» e̯irḗke̯in*.

*«Ὠνέομαι/ὠνοῦμαι» ōnéŏma̯i* (uncontracted)/*ōnoûma̯i* (contracted) --> _to buy, purchase_ (Present indicative). Its suppletive Aorist form is *«ἐπριάμην» ĕprĭámēn*.


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## Olaszinhok

apmoy70 said:


> According to my lexicon of basic irregular verbs in Ancient Greek, they are 219.



How about modern Greek?


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## ilocas2

All Slavic thread about irregular verbs - All Slavic languages: Verb irregularity


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## apmoy70

Olaszinhok said:


> How about modern Greek?


They are 159. A couple of examples:

*«Βλέπω»* [ˈvlepo] --> _to see, look at_ (Present indicative) forms its Aorist by borrowing the aorist II of the ancient v. *«ὁρῶ» ŏrô* (which has itself suppletive Aorist II): *«είδα»* [ˈiða] < Classical Aorist II form *«εἶδον» e̯îdŏn*.
Its mediopassive participle presents the offglide of the diphthong «εἰ-» of Aorist II: *«ιδωμένος, -νη, -νο»* [iðoˈmenos] (masc.), [iðoˈmeni] (fem.), [iðoˈmeno] (neut.) --> past participle _seen_.

*«Έρχομαι»* [ˈerxome] --> _to come, arrive_ (Present indicative) has the suppletive Aorist *«ήλθα»* [ˈilθa] < Classical Aorist II *«ἦλθον» êltʰŏn*


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## Gavril

apmoy70 said:


> According to my lexicon of basic irregular verbs in Ancient Greek, they are 219..



Much of the irregularity counted in Greek verbs seems based on irregularity between the main categories (present, aorist, perfect etc.), but I wonder how many examples would be found if we only counted irregularities within these categories.

An example of the latter would be _eînai_ "to be", which has the 2sg. past imperfect _ēstha_ "thou wert" (though the more regular form _ēs_ is also attested), or _eidénai_ "know", which has an unusual _e-_/_o_- alternation in its forms (1sg. indicative _oîda_ instead of *_eîda_ as you would expect from the infinitive).

(When counting irregular verbs, I think there is a case to be made for using different metrics depending on which languages are being compared, but we don't need to go into that here.)


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## apmoy70

^
Agreed, but trying to establish irregularities within the same category would take a lot of time, and a lot of grey matter, we're talking about (I'm not exaggerating) thousands of different types.
Besides even serious lexica offer just the 1st p. sing. of the verb in all tenses.

Just a sidenote: Greek verb is denoted by the 1st p. sing. of the present tense, and not the infinitive, the latter is true for Latin


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## Ectab

Josh_ said:


> Arabic is like Hebrew in that the verbs are grouped into categories according to conjugation patterns, and all the verbs with group conjugate the same. So I don't believe there are any irregular verbs.


That's right, but Arabic has only one irregular verb which is رأى ra'aa (to see- past) يرى yaraa (to see- present) it has the root r-'-y but the second one the glottal stop ' is droppd in the present for no reason, it is the only verb that drop it, so it should be, according to the Arabic verb conjugation system yar'aa.


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## bibax

Czech has 5 athematic verbs: býti (to be), míti (to have), dáti (to give), jísti (to eat), věděti (to know).
They can be considered irregular. Other verbs are thematic.

However there is a *bunch* of phonetic rules. If you know them and you are able to apply them correctly (quite strong requirement), then the thematic verbs are regular.


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## Encolpius

Hungarian is with top regular words, but I think Turkish verbs are even more regular.


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## Red Arrow

Anne345 said:


> German 170
> Dutch Over 300-350


I don't think this is fair. The only reason there are so many 'irregular' verbs in Dutch and German is because strong verbs are considered irregular.
That's like saying all French verbs that don't end with -er are irregular.

All Dutch verbs with IJ are considered irregular, but they all follow the same pattern.
rijden
Ik rijd
Ik reed
Ik heb gereden

snijden
Ik snijd
Ik sneed
Ik heb gesneden

bijten
Ik bijt
Ik beet
Ik heb gebeten

How is this irregular?!!


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## franciscopires

1. Portuguese has about 1000 pure irregular verbs.
2. plus several *thousands *in those that are regullar in written but *IRREGULAR *in pronunciation AND
3. plus several *thousands *in those that are irregullar in written but *REGULAR *in pronunciation.

Portuguese with its dictionary of 45,000 verbs, in the infinitive form, including reflexive verbs, if we include 2 and 3 in the list of irregular verbs, (we dont do that), we would have many, many thousands of _irregular _verbs.


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## Testing1234567

OP:

How do you define irregular verbs? Where is the boundary between irregular verbs and verb conjugation types? Is "drink/drank/drunk" and "ring/rang/rung" and "swim/swam/sum" and "begin/began/begun" 4 irregular verbs or one verb class?

Note: except for ring/rang/rung, the three other verbs are classified as Germanic class-3 strong verbs. The "i" is from the PIE "e" ablaut, the "a" is from the PIE "o" ablaut, and the "u" is from the zero grade. The story for ring/rang/rung is more complicated.

In German, begin/began/begun is beginnen/begann/begonnen. In Old Saxon, it is biginnan/bigan/bigunnan.

A fairer (albeit still somewhat problematic) comparison would be the number of verb classes.


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## Kotlas

Testing1234567 said:


> Is "drink/drank/drunk" and "ring/rang/rung" and "swim/swam/sum" and "begin/began/begun" 4 irregular verbs or one verb class?


and also -  sink and stink
Why, of course these are all irregular verbs, Testing. They just belong to the same irregularity pattern, that's all.


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## Testing1234567

demoore said:


> What do you mean by irregular verbs?Concerning the 没 and the 不 it's not that simple. Both of them can be used with most of the verb.- 我不去 : I don't go- 我没去 : I did not go.


我不去 is the negation of 我去 I go.
我沒去 is the negation of 我有去 I went.
Inb4 no tense in Chinese.


Kotlas said:


> and also -  sink and stink
> Why, of course these are all irregular verbs, Testing. They just belong to the same irregularity pattern, that's all.


So there can be only one pattern that counts as the regular pattern in any given language? That's a silly notion, as you wouldn't count *читать* as the only regular pattern and *говори́ть* irregular.


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## franciscopires

My experience tells me that those 4 verbs belong to the same irregular verb class, so, they are 4 irregular verbs.

English language is very poor in verb conjugation, only the 3 scandinavian languages ( danish, norwegian and swedish) are poorer then english in verb conjugations.
The richest verb in english is "to be" with 8 forms, in portuguese ( ser or estar) goes up to 76 forms, that *NOT *including auxiliary verbs.


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## Testing1234567

franciscopires said:


> My experience tells me that those 4 verbs belong to the same irregular verb class, so, they are 4 irregular verbs.


And I'm saying that the distinction between a class of irregular verbs and a class of regular verbs is arbitrary and is not really useful/fair for comparison between languages.


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## franciscopires

No, it is not, but, however rich or poor a language is, it has got irregular verbs, does not matter if portuguese has got 76 forms for one verb and english has got 8 for one verb, in the end, english language has got many irregular verbs, over 600, and those irregular verbs do drive a latin person nuts.


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## Testing1234567

franciscopires said:


> No, it is not



What makes "talk/talked/talked" more regular than "swim/swam/swum"?


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## Dymn

Testing1234567 said:


> What makes "talk/talked/talked" more regular than "swim/swam/swum"?


The fact of being a more common and more productive inflection, I'd say. I mean, there is certainly not a clear-cut line between a regular and an irregular verb (or at least in other languages) but that doesn't mean we can reject the label altogether, there are indeed typical paradigms and ones which are rare or even unique in a single verb.


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## Testing1234567

But it certainly isn't fair to count 100 irregular verbs if they belong to the same class...


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## franciscopires

Testing1234567 said:


> What makes "talk/talked/talked" more regular than "swim/swam/swum"?



Verbs with the -ed at the end are regular, they are always the same, never change.


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## franciscopires

Testing1234567 said:


> But it certainly isn't fair to count 100 irregular verbs if they belong to the same class...



irregular verbs are irregular verbs, even if they belong to the same class, because they belong to the irregular class.


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## Red Arrow

What about all Dutch verbs with ij? When you see ij, you know it's a strong verb and will be conjugated as such.

Swim/swam/swum is also strong but the vowel I is not a marker. There are plenty of verbs with I that are weak. For instance: itch/itched/itched (not itch/atch/utch  )


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## Gavril

I agree with Testing. Instead of "regular / irregular pattern", it would be more accurate to say "more common / less common pattern", etc.


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## Rallino

franciscopires said:


> Verbs with the -ed at the end are regular, they are always the same, never change.



But what's the difference between memorizing that this verb takes -ed and that verb belongs to the i-a-u pattern?

In my opinion "ring-rang-rung" is as regular as "talk-talked-talked".


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## Dymn

Testing1234567 said:


> But it certainly isn't fair to count 100 irregular verbs if they belong to the same class...



Why not? This only applies to a handful of verbs, numbers can be easily enlarged when you count rare uncommon words. I have looked up a list of the 100 most common irregular verbs in English (or non-ed if you want to call them otherwise), and only 7 of them follow this paradigm (_begin, drink, ring, shrink, swim, sing, sink_). This is certainly a noteworthy pattern with its historical reasons and all but it doesn't suffice to call it regular in my opinion, partly too because it can only be applied to short i + nasal verbs, if I get it right. And you'll also get exceptions, like _think_. Besides, there are other significant patterns too, like _ow-ew-own _(_blow, grow, know, throw_), staying the same (_cut, hit, let, put, set, shut_, etc.) or short vowel + t if possible (_dream, feel, leave, lose, mean, meet, shoot, _etc.). But all of these are rather limited for certain stem vowels (and therefore can not be applied to any verb) and are no longer productive safe for humourous purposes. For instance I can not recall a single irregular Romance or Latinate verb.

I agree that there is no clear-cut divide between regular and irregular, that there is a spectrum in between, but that doesn't mean we can entirely discard putting a line for whatever purposes. If I were to teach English to somebody I would say "regular is _-ed_, irregular is otherwise", it's just simpler and patterns will be noticed by the learner once they gain familiarity with the language.


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## Red Arrow

Rallino said:


> But what's the difference between memorizing that this verb takes -ed and that verb belongs to the i-a-u pattern? .


The difference is that you have to learn a list of verbs that follow the i-a-u pattern. You can't guess which verbs will follow which pattern.

French has got several predictable verb patterns:
-er
-ir
-eindre / -aindre / -oindre
-uire
other -re verbs

But then there are verbs such as ouvrir that conjugate more or less like -er verbs. They are irregular just like English i-a-u verbs.


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## Gavril

You can't guess that _see_, _write_, _bind_ and so on are not -_ed_ verbs any more than you can guess that _climb_, _sleep_, etc. are not ablauting verbs.


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## Rallino

Gavril said:


> You can't guess that _see_, _write_, _bind_ and so on are not -_ed_ verbs any more than you can guess that _climb_, _sleep_, etc. are not ablauting verbs.



Exactly what I mean. Learning that a verb is in the i-a-u pattern takes exactly the same amount of effort as learning that it takes -ed.


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## Dymn

What are irregular verbs for you who think i-a-u is *exactly as regular *as -ed?


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## Rallino

For example, sit-sat-sat or run-ran-run would be irregular for me. So would go-went-gone.

Maybe catch and teach too, as they take -aught rather than -ought in writing.


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## Dymn

So what verbs take _-ought_?

_Bring_? Why not _sing_, _ring, swing_?
_Think_? Why not _blink, wink_, or _drink, shrink, sink_?
_Fight_? Why not _light_?

Are instances of i-a-u rule well-defined too? Because I see no clear rule, just patterns... I have collected _-in, -ing, -ink _and _-im, _all nasal and a rather reduced group. But the paradigm of minor verbs with these endings (not directly inherited from Proto-Germanic perhaps?) is _-ed_. Productive past and participle is always _-ed_, which may be a clue of what inflection method is considered regular by native speakers...


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## Rallino

That's the problem indeed. We don't know what form a given verb will take just by looking at its dictionary form. How do you know that _fill_ becomes _filled_ and not *fall?

In that perspective, either every verb is irregular, or there are patterns, or verb groups whatever, and the rest is irregular. We can group them as such:

1st group: -ed verbs.
2nd group: i-a-u verbs.
3rd group: -ought verbs.
4th group: verbs that don't change (like, put-put-put, set-set-set)

Maybe 5th group: -ear-ore-orn? 

And the rest is irregular, like: light-lit-lit.


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## ilocas2

If the only thing you need to know for conjugating is the infinitive - then it's a regular verb.
If you have to know any other thing for conjugating than the infinitive - then it's an irregular verb.

The convention is that the -ed verbs are regular - you need to know just the infinitive.
For other verbs, even if they follow some pattern, you must know that they follow this pattern - they are irregular.

The convention could be of course for example that i-a-u verbs are regular and all other verbs are irregular but it's not the case.


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## ilocas2

I think if you add -ed to any verb in English you will be at least understood, even if it's incorrect.

If you conjugate for example walk - wought - wought you won't be understood.


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## Rallino

Of course adding a suffix is more obvious than changing the root.


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## Gavril

ilocas2 said:


> I think if you add -ed to any verb in English you will be at least understood, even if it's incorrect.



That's because frequency makes people more accustomed to the meaning of -_ed_; it doesn't mean that -_ed_ is qualitatively different (in terms of speakers' understanding) from ablaut past-tense forms.

I once saw the archaic form _clomb _("climbed") used in a text, and I was able to infer what it meant based on the model of _write/wrote_, _drive_/_drove_, etc.


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## Red Arrow

Gavril said:


> You can't guess that _see_, _write_, _bind_ and so on are not -_ed_ verbs any more than you can guess that _climb_, _sleep_, etc. are not ablauting verbs.


So when an English speaker sees a new verb with short I followed by a nasal, he has absolutely no idea how to conjugate it and will have to look it up?


ilocas2 said:


> If the only thing you need to know for conjugating is the infinitive - then it's a regular verb.
> If you have to know any other thing for conjugating than the infinitive - then it's an irregular verb.
> 
> The convention is that the -ed verbs are regular - you need to know just the infinitive.
> For other verbs, even if they follow some pattern, you must know that they follow this pattern - they are irregular.
> 
> The convention could be of course for example that i-a-u verbs are regular and all other verbs are irregular but it's not the case.


Exactly.


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## Testing1234567

Dymn said:


> Why not? This only applies to a handful of verbs, numbers can be easily enlarged when you count rare uncommon words. I have looked up a list of the 100 most common irregular verbs in English (or non-ed if you want to call them otherwise), and only 7 of them follow this paradigm (_begin, drink, ring, shrink, swim, sing, sink_). This is certainly a noteworthy pattern with its historical reasons and all but it doesn't suffice to call it regular in my opinion, partly too because it can only be applied to short i + nasal verbs, if I get it right. And you'll also get exceptions, like _think_.



This is indeed a good point.



Dymn said:


> Besides, there are other significant patterns too, like _ow-ew-own _(_blow, grow, know, throw_), staying the same (_cut, hit, let, put, set, shut_, etc.) or short vowel + t if possible (_dream, feel, leave, lose, mean, meet, shoot, _etc.). But all of these are rather limited for certain stem vowels (and therefore can not be applied to any verb) and are no longer productive safe for humourous purposes.



This is also a good point.



Dymn said:


> For instance I can not recall a single irregular Romance or Latinate verb.


There's this "strive" from French, but it doesn't matter, as its irregularities are from Frankish. The verb "catch" is from French, but its irregularities are from analogy with possibly "latch" at a time when "latch" was irregular. The verbs "plead", "prove" and "quit" are also from French.



Dymn said:


> I agree that there is no clear-cut divide between regular and irregular, that there is a spectrum in between, but that doesn't mean we can entirely discard putting a line for whatever purposes. If I were to teach English to somebody I would say "regular is _-ed_, irregular is otherwise", it's just simpler and patterns will be noticed by the learner once they gain familiarity with the language.



Yes, for educational purposes, that would be the case. But for the purpose of counting irregular verbs and *comparing across languages*, maybe we should group some "irregular" verbs with similar patterns? Comparing irregular verbs is actually comparing the complexity of the verb system, but are seven i-a-u verbs really more complex than one i-a-u verb?



ilocas2 said:


> If the only thing you need to know for conjugating is the infinitive - then it's a regular verb.
> If you have to know any other thing for conjugating than the infinitive - then it's an irregular verb.
> 
> The convention is that the -ed verbs are regular - you need to know just the infinitive.
> For other verbs, even if they follow some pattern, you must know that they follow this pattern - they are irregular.
> 
> The convention could be of course for example that i-a-u verbs are regular and all other verbs are irregular but it's not the case.



This makes no sense at all. For "talk", you need to know that it follows the -ed pattern. You're just convincing yourself.



ilocas2 said:


> I think if you add -ed to any verb in English you will be at least understood, even if it's incorrect.
> 
> If you conjugate for example walk - wought - wought you won't be understood.



This is just because the -ed pattern is more productive.



Rallino said:


> Of course adding a suffix is more obvious than changing the root.



So cut/cut/cut should be regular?


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## Gavril

Red Arrow :D said:


> So when an English speaker sees a new verb with short I followed by a nasal, he has absolutely no idea how to conjugate it and will have to look it up?



If he wants to ensure that the conjugation follows the most common usage patterns (or prescriptive standards), then yes. But for the purposes of intelligible communication, no. Adding -_ed_ to a verb is almost always a reliable way of communicating the past tense (because its frequency accustoms speakers to the pattern), even if it is an ablauting verb according to the most common usage patterns.


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## ilocas2

Testing1234567 said:


> This makes no sense at all. For "talk", you need to know that it follows the -ed pattern. You're just convincing yourself.



Let's suppose there is only one irregular verb in a language X. If I learn in the first lesson of learning that it's irregular, I will know how to conjugate all other verbs. If there are 6 irregular verbs in a language X, after learning them, I will know how to conjugate all other verbs. If you want to speak English at a near-native level, you must learn all the irregular verbs anyway.


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## Testing1234567

ilocas2 said:


> Let's suppose there is only one irregular verb in a language X. If I learn in the first lesson of learning that it's irregular, I will know how to conjugate all other verbs. If there are 6 irregular verbs in a language X, after learning them, I will know how to conjugate all other verbs. If you want to speak English at a near-native level, you must learn all the irregular verbs anyway.


Let's say the irregular verb in the language X is fubar.

So, once I see "fubar", I would know how to conjugate it. Therefore, the only thing I need to know is indeed the infinitive.


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## ilocas2

You must learn the conjugation of each irregular verb and the pattern for regular verbs.


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## Nino83

In this page there are 162 Italian verbs (plus the derived verbs) with an irregular conjugation.
Most of them have an irregular conjugation in _passato remoto_.
Almost all these verbs are regular in Spanish and Portuguese.



Spoiler: some examples in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish



some examples in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish:
_*vinsi*, vinceste, *vinse*, vincemmo, vinceste, *vinsero*
venci, venciste, venceu, vencemos, vencestes, venceram
vencí, venciste, venció, vencimos, vencisteis, vencieron_

_*bevvi*, bevesti, *bevve*, bevemmo, beveste, *bevvero*
bebi, bebeste, bebeu, bebemos, bebestes, beberam 
bebí, bebiste, bebió, bebimos, bebisteis, bebieron_



Even if there are some sub-patterns, these verbs are considered irregular because they don't follow the "general" (most common) pattern.

liquid/nasal + ʧ > s; vincere > vinsi, torcere > torsi 
ʃː > bː; conoscere > conobbi, crescere > crebbi but nascere > nacqui (ʃː > kːw)


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## Dymn

Testing1234567 said:


> There's this "strive" from French, but it doesn't matter, as its irregularities are from Frankish. The verb "catch" is from French, but its irregularities are from analogy with possibly "latch" at a time when "latch" was irregular. The verbs "plead", "prove" and "quit" are also from French.


Thanks 



Testing1234567 said:


> Yes, for educational purposes, that would be the case. But for the purpose of counting irregular verbs and *comparing across languages*, maybe we should group some "irregular" verbs with similar patterns?


I don't know, perhaps we should agree that irregular verbs are those which the grammar tradition of each language considers, and just putting into context that regularities may be more or less complex depending on the language. For example you only need to learn one paradigm of four forms in English for regular verbs, while three paradigms of around 40 forms in Romance languages. I guess it is much easier to compare irregular verbs inside of a language family, like between English and German or Portuguese and Italian, because of similar functioning and comparability between cognates. But it also makes sense to say that Hungarian and Turkish have less irregular verbs that the languages we are mentionning, basically due to their agglutinativeness.

---

That said, as for *Catalan*, one source of irregularities is _-g- _cropping up in 2nd and 3rd conjugation verbs. For example, the stem of the verb _deure _"to owe" is _dev-_, but _deg- _appears in subjunctive, preterite and participle, as well as in 1st singular present. This pattern is actually followed in many other verbs like _beure _"to drink", _seure _"to sit", _treure _"to take out", _creure _"to believe", and others like _poder _"to be able", etc. in general _-g- _appears quite often in the previously mentioned tenses. There is a bit of _ix _(pronounced "sh") and _sc _variation (e.g. _créixer _"to grow" but _crescut _"grown"), or _o/u _variation, _o_ in unstressed and _u _in stressed position (e.g. _sortir _"to go out" but _surto _"I go out"), but vowel stem change is not that common. Third conjugation is split between "normal" and inchoative _-eix- _verbs, spoken language prefers the inchoative paradigm (e.g. _menteix _"(s)he lies" instead of _ment_). This is actually more common than French and Italian because many Latinisms take _-ir _rather than _-er _(e.g. _protegir _"to protect"). There are some irregular participles, ending in _-s _(_entès _"understood", _pres _"taken", _promès _"promised"), not as common as in Italian though. 

As for *Spanish*, the main difficulty is vowel stem change in verbs like _sentir _(_sentir _"to feel", _siento _"I feel", _sintió _"(s)he felt"), or _dormir _(_dormir _"to sleep", _duermo _"I sleep", _durmió _"I slept"). I think _e/ie/i _and _o/ue/u _are not very common, but _e/ie _and _o/ue _are, and you must remember which verbs take this changes and which don't (e.g. _negar _"to deny" and _querer _"to want" do, _borrar _"to erase" and _quedar _"to remain" don't), though distribution easily follows stressed vs. unstressed position. Some verbs also have _i_ in stressed, _e _in unstressed (_pido _"I ask" but _pedimos _"we ask"), same for _reír _"to laugh" or _decir _"to say". Besides, I think preterite is highly irregular (e.g. _supe _"I knew", _anduve _"I walked", _conduje _"I drove"), more than in Catalan for use, and even then Catalan preterite is dated/literary. Participles are rather regular and there are no inchoatives that don't have it marked in the infinitive (e.g. _florecer _"to flourish" and so on). Other than that, there are some irregularities like _-g- _in _vengo _"I come"_, salgo _"I go out"_, tengo _"I have", etc. or _-cer _> _-zco_, in 1st singular present and subjunctive (_conocer _"to know"), but these also exist in similar ways in other Romance languages. Spanish is very similar in conjugation in Portuguese, but Portuguese doesn't exhibit as much vowel stem change, so it could be a contender for the most regular Romance language.

By the way, spelling tricks to keep the same sound, like _g/gu_, _c/qu, c/z, j/g_, can not be counted as irregularities under any criterion.


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## Olaszinhok

Dymn said:


> Besides, I think preterite is highly irregular (e.g. _supe _"I knew", _anduve _"I walked", _conduje _"I drove"), more than in Catalan for use, and even then Catalan preterite is dated/literary



I personally don't think that Spanish preterite is highly irregular if compared to the corresponding French _passé simple_ and particularly  the Italian _Passato remoto_, which are way more irregular than the Spanish counterpart. Spanish has a bunch of irregularities but nothing special after all.


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## Nino83

In Italian we have 14 irregular verbs (essere, stare, avere, andare, venire, dare, dire, fare, porre, tenere, potere, sapere, vedere, volere), they are more or less the same 14 verbs in Portuguese and Spanish.
Then Italian has those 160 irregular verbs in _passato remoto_, but one could set 24 patterns with some exceptions:
vowel + consonant:
1 `scere > bb conoscere
2 `cere > ss cuocere
3 cére > kkw piacere
4 `dere > s  chiedere
5 dére > dd cadere
6 `ggere > ss leggere
7 `llere > lsi  eccellere
8 lére > lsi  valere
9 `gliere > ls  scegliere
10 `mere > ss comprimere
11 `mere > ns redimere, (ad-;pre-)sumere
12 nére > s rimanere
13 nére > nn  tenere
14 mpere > pp rompere,
15 `rrere > rs  correre
16 rére > rv  parere
17 `(t)tere > ss annettere, discutere
18 `vere > ss muovere, scrivere, vivere,
19 `vere > vv piovere, be(ve)re
consonant in syllable coda + consonant:
20 `rcere/`ncere > rs/ns torcere, vincere 
21 `ndere > s rispondere
22 `rdere > rs perdere 
23 `ngere/`rgere > ns/rs fingere, porgere 
24 `lvere > ls (ad-;ri-)solvere, devolvere, 
the exceptions are:
`scere > kkw nascere
`cere > kkw nuocere
`dere > ss concedere, succedere, retrocedere,
dére > s persuadere
`gere > ss diligere, dirigere, redigere,
`ndere > ns spandere
`ndere > ss scindere

As you can see, most of the time there is a double "s", sometimes a single "s", a consonant + single "s" in those with a consonant in syllable coda while in some patterns the consonant is longer.
So we have reduced the Italian _passato remoto_ in 24 "irregular" patterns plus 7 exceptions (plus the 3 regular patterns), for a total of 34 patterns.
The important difference between the Italian and the English patterns (or classes) is that in Italian you can predict the conjugation of _passato remoto_ from the infinitive form of the verb.


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## Olaszinhok

Nino, you've forgotten some irregular verbs, such as _morire_ to die: present tense _io muoio, uscire_ to go out, udire_ to hear_, and many others. They've got irregularities in other verb tenses. Most verbs also have irregularities not only in _Passato rem_oto but also in _participio pass_ato past participle, hence in  _passato pro_ssimo.


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## Nino83

You're right, Olaszinhok. I focused on _passato remoto_ because it is the tense with more irrregular verbs.


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## Red Arrow

Swedish strong verbs are almost completely regular vowel-wise. Only class 5 has become quite irregular. It only has 4 verbs left.
All other strong verbs can be learned by memorizing 11 vowel patterns.

a (long) – o – a (6)
e (long) – a/å – e (ge – gav – gett (giver – gav – givit) and se – såg – sett) (5)
i (long) – e – i (1)
u (long) – ö – u (2)
y (long) – ö – u (2)
å (long) – ä – å (7)
exception: slå – slog – slagit (6) (like long a)
ä (long) – a – u (4)
exception: äta – åt – åtit (5)
a (short) – ö – a (7)
i (short) – a – u (3/4)
exception: ligga – låg – legat (5)
u (short) – ö – u (2)
å (short) – ö – å (7)
ä (short) – a – u (3)

Verbs with long o/ö or short e/o/y/ö are never strong.

I find weak verbs a bit trickier because sometimes the stem doesn’t end in a vowel and then the conjugation is quite different.
Unfortunately, none of the strong verb classes in Swedish is still productive. In Dutch, at least new verbs are made in class 1. Weak verbs with ij became strong as well.


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## Cheburator

It really depends on what you consider to be "regular". What some people call just "patterns" in Arabic, takes 727 pages of a book to describe it https://mgimo.ru/files/19083/Arabic_Irregular_Verbs.pdf
What they consider to be "irregularity" in English, can be rendered to a couple of pages.


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## rayloom

Cheburator said:


> It really depends on what you consider to be "regular". What some people call just "patterns" in Arabic, takes 727 pages of a book to describe it https://mgimo.ru/files/19083/Arabic_Irregular_Verbs.pdf
> What they consider to be "irregularity" in English, can be rendered to a couple of pages.



I flipped through the book. It deals with the the (full) conjugation in all verbal forms/patterns in all aspects, voices and moods of hollow verbs (and verbs with hamza) in Arabic. That's why it's long.
You can imagine we have 15 forms of triliteral verbs, 3 ablaut forms of the G-stem, 2 voices for each pattern, 3 moods and 2 aspects. In addition each verb is conjugated for person, number and gender. Hollow verbs can be hollow initially, medially or finally, same goes with hamza. Then we have quadriliteral verbs which are hollow or have a hamza. 
Hollowness can be from a w or y in the root. 
In the end it's quite regular 
If you know the pattern and conjugations you can conjugate hollow verbs without referring to a dictionary or a book.


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## Cheburator

Yeah, just learn 700 pages of conjucation, and you're a master 

There's much more to it than that, actually, you just don't notice it because you're a native speaker. I don't know very much about irregularity of Russian verbs. As for Arabic, there is also a trick about which middle vowel a verb will take in the Present Tense (kat*a*ba - yakt*u*bu), and if we take the most common models as "regular", then we get about 20-30% (or something) of irretular verbs. If you look at English, you'll see that their "irregularity" is, in most cases, only about the middle vowel (which is often also the only one  ). But in all Arabic courses this is not considered as "irregularity", they just want you to memorize that this verb will have "kesra" in the Present, and that verb will have "damma", while those ones - "fatha". No, mate, they are regular, but you have to memorize each one


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## rayloom

Yes the G-stem ablaut is quite tricky 
It has certain rules regarding the dynamic vs stative nature of the verb but there are irregularities there.
But if you know the root and the active imperfect form of the G-stem verb then you're usually good to go.


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