Learn English – Evolution of irregular verbs over the last century

ablauted-vs-tirregularverbs

I learned at school that irregular verbs are slowly disappearing from the language: "spelled" is more used than "spelt", "learned" than "learnt", etc. But recently, someone told me that some new irregular forms are created: "snuck" instead of "sneaked", etc.

Questions are: Is my understanding above correct? Can you cite other examples of newly created irregular forms (let's say during the 20th century)? Which phenomenon is numerically more significant?

Best Answer

It's difficult to find evidence for saying that "irregular verbs are dying out" overall. There are:

  • a few cases, e.g. "spelt"/"spelled", "wrought"/"worked", where over the last few centuries there have been fluctuations/changes in the percentage use of the regular vs irregular alternative, with the regular alternative having ousted the irregular to differing extents;
  • a few cases where a more modern use of an older verb takes on a regular form ("it cost 10 dollars"->"they costed it out"; "it was put in"->"it was input[ted] incorrectly");
  • a few cases where the trend has gone the other way, in some cases fairly recently (e.g. "dived"/"dove", "sneaked"/"snuck"-- where "snuck" appears to be more recent in fact); also cf. "he hanged himself"->"he hung himself;
  • a few cases where one irregular form has or is being supplanted by another, but it's probably fair to say the verb is still "irregular" overall: "he span it"/"he spun it", "it hasn't run"/"it hasn't ran"

But if you look at the language overall, I don't think the number of irregular verbs has really changed in order of magnitude over the past few centuries, nor has there been any kind of structural change overall (the overall "types of paradigm allowed by English verbs" has essentially remained the same).

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