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In English,strong, or irregular verbs form their past tenses by means of ablaut, that is a change in the stem vowel. They are among the oldest and commonest of English verbs. For example take:took; come:came; see:saw; write:wrote, and so on. The verbs to go and to be even have a different stem - or two!- in the past tenses.

Weak, or regular verbs form their past tenses by the addition of the suffix, -d, -ed or -t, without changing the stem vowel. For example ask:asked; donate:donated; learn; learned or learnt. Some otherwise regular verbs may distinguish between the active and the passive past participle, for example proved:proven and mowed:mown

Newly coined verbs are weak, and it may seem that the productive period of strong verbs is over, but the English speaker's affinity for the older, strong forms is still in operation, as seen in popular usages like dive:dove and sneak:snuck, where the "correct" past forms are dived and sneaked, respectively.

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13y ago

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