The German-language (?) organization Gesellschaft zur Stärkung der Verben (the Society for the Irregularization of Verbs) advocates for the conversion of regular verbs to irregular, and more generally for the reintroduction of irregular forms to the German language.
The linguistic term for irregular verbs in Germanic languages is “strong”, as opposed to regular or “weak” verbs. More formally, a “strong” verb is one that forms tenses by changes to the vowel rather than by adding a dental suffix (“-t” or “-d”). You can see this in English, with irregular verbs like sing, sang, sung changing the vowel, and regular verbs like jump, jumped, jumped adding an “-ed” suffix.
For example, in modern standard German, the verb sterben (to die) conjugates as sterben, starb, gestorben, but the seemingly analogous verb erben (to inherit) is a regular verb: erben, erbte, geerbt. But why so weak and feeble? Let’s make these weak verbs strong and proud:¹ erben, arb, georben!
An English-language equivalent would be changing the regular verb bake from bake, baked, baked to bake, book, baken to match the irregular verb take, took, taken.
The name for their reformed version of German is “Neutsch”, but they leave ambiguous whether this is a portmanteau for Neues Deutsch (new German) or Nicht Deutsch (not German). I think we’re better off not knowing.
¹ The society’s name is a pun, since it literally translates as “Society for the Strengthening of Verbs”.
The problem with this proposal is that it undercomplicates the language. Sticking to English examples, it should bake, book, blaskhfawdlksajasdl. And make sure you note the position of the j, because blaskhfawdlksaajsdl (obviously!) means to mislead with intent to commit fraud. Thankfully computers will have no difficulty keeping track of that distinction, and in this era of AI humans probably won’t need to read (or write) much anyway.
Well, to put it like https://neutsch.org/Englisch … “I was not ready for what awote me.” 😀
There is a difference between “strong” verbs (swim, swam, swum or give, gave, given), and “irregular” verbs (am, was, been).
Are there any rules to irregularization?
take/took/taken
make/made/made
wake/woke/woken
bake/?/?
run/ran/run
jump/jamp/jump?
rise/rose/risen
irregularize/irregularoze/irregularizen?
There are no rules but there are 3 pattern groups:
Same spelling in base/past-tense/past-participle: put/put/put or set/set/set
Same spelling for past-tense/past-participle: send/sent/sent or think/thought/thought
No holds barred anything goes leftovers: fly/flew/flown or go/went/gone
https://byjus.com/english/irregular-verbs/
Variation of first group:
Same spelling but different pronunciation in base/past-tense/past-participle: read/read/read
There are rules for strong verbs (which is what are being discussed). See https://ianjamesparsley.wordpress.com/2020/01/17/strong-verbs-and-how-people-always-get-them-wrong/ for example.
Then we could find Baken numbers for verbs!
I was skeptical at first, but “baken” convinced me. Baken makes everything better.
Not Nutsch?