Soup du Langue
Why is the plural of hoof "hooves", but the plural of roof is not "rooves"*? If the English language was a person she would say, "Because I said so, that's why."
The history of a language can really be boiled down to who conquered whom. The English language is a mix of German, French, and some Latin for various historical and monarchical reasons. That is probably why it demands a word taken from one language be changed one way and a similar sounding word that is actually from another language asks to be treated a different way.
Lots of English language words are confusing, but especially when they change tense. Present-tense "take" becomes "took". "All right," a young child often thinks, "Then 'bake' becomes 'book' and 'cake' becomes 'cook.'" Never mind that cake is (usually) a noun, except when speaking about how mud got "caked" onto your favorite sneakers.
And I thought Spanish was difficult in its conjugations -- for many words I wanted to use I have forgotten how to alter their root when they change tense. But every language I can read because of its basic Latin alphabet has its own conjugations.
The answer for that is to just try to memorize the words that have special conjugations, just as my Spanish teachers urged me to do. For English, with its intermixing of different systems, the task can be daunting. No wonder English is one of the most difficult second languages to learn.
Changing word tense and number in any language may be scary.
Be careful when conjugating!
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