Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is episode 56, the week versus the strong.

In this episode, we're going to conclude our look at Old English grammar.

And we're going to do that by focusing on the traditional distinction between so-called

strong verbs and weak verbs.

And we're going to examine why that distinction has become so muddled in modern English.

Now this may seem very technical, but it's really not.

It's ultimately the reason why some English speakers say dived and other speakers say dove.

And why some people say dreamed and other people say dreamt.

And it's why we say hanged in certain situations, but hung in other situations.

So we're going to try to figure out why those past tense forms are so variable in modern English.

And as is often the case, the answer lies in the history of the language.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is history of English podcast.com.

And you can always reach me directly at Kevin at historyofenglishpodcast.com.

And I'm also on Twitter at EnglishHistPod.

Now let's turn to this episode about the history of English verbs.

And really this episode is about the history of the past tense forms of those verbs.

And why the past tense forms can vary so much within English.

When it comes to verbs, there are many different ways to classify them,

depending on their function and how they work within sentences.

But the most basic and fundamental way to distinguish verbs is to look at how they change

from present tense to past tense. As we've seen before, English doesn't have a specific future

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