Are all Latin-derived English verbs regular? For ex. decide, arrive add -ed in their past forms. Are there any specific rules to follow? To spend is irregular: why? Does it depend on when these verbs entered the English language? Thank you
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1Yes, very much dependent on when it entered the English language. See english.stackexchange.com/a/137873/3306 and english.stackexchange.com/questions/47982/….– rajah9Commented Dec 16, 2013 at 17:15
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1Dear rajah9, thank you for your answer. English is far too rich in shades and a good "History of the English Language" guide should be kept on everybody's bedside table. Good night from Italy– user59887Commented Dec 16, 2013 at 19:20
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4 Answers
cost
Comes from the Latin "constare", meaning literally to stand with, whose meaning likely changed due to the expression "The item stands at X dollars", according to etymonline.
There are surely others.
I like etymonline.com for these questions.
For example, it tracks 'spend' from Old English from Latin. This sounds right to me, because spend-spent sounds like a Germanic verb conjugation. There's also rend-rent, lend-lent and bend-bent. You can make groups of these and you'll find that they all have similar histories.
Bend from bendan spend from -spendan (from forspendan, to use up) rend from rendan lend - laenan
So it seems like those old English "-an" verbs that we still have get conjugated into the past with "-t".
But tend-tended, eh? Etymonline again to the rescue: Either middle english "Attenden" or old French "tendre". Not old English Tendan!
So the best answer to your question I can give is, if you want to figure out why a verb is conjugated the way it is, think of as many verbs with similar endings, make a list comparing their present forms and the other forms you're interested in, and then look up the etymologies! Any "rules" will become more and more clear as you go on.
Hope that helps!
It’s a good question. Steven Pinker answers it in his book ‘Words and Rules’ as follows:
Almost all of the thousands of French and Latin words that were loaned to English since 1066 are regular.
answered Dec 27, 2013 at 20:14
It is the case that in all of the world's languages that those that have regular/irregular verb forms the irregular verbs are the oldest verbs, those that are part of the "basic" or "core" versions of those languages, and those that are used the most often in day-to-day speech by all classes of people and all levels of education. Simple verbs like "run", "breathe", "feel", "have", and "be" are among the first verbs known to exist in any language, are the oldest verbs, and are the ones that retained their conjugations from a time before any regular verbs existed at all.
So, in all languages (that have regular/irregular verb forms - not all do), the newest verbs are those that follow the well-established rules of regularity that came into existence as the language matured.
