Regularity of irregular verbs

In all English classes that I took, irregular verbs were presented as a long table of wildly different words to memorize. For years, I did not question this approach. Why should have I? These verbs are called irregular for a reason; there are no hard and fast rules about them.

Or so I thought. As I doubled down on Anki reviews and committed all the words to memory, there was this nagging feeling… Until I realized a few days ago that there are certain similarities, certain rules by which irregular verbs are formed. They can be grouped into smaller, neater tables where everything is simple!

I wanted to write a blog post about that grouping, but it turns out someone already did it. So I’m sharing this in hope that more English learners will discover this technique, and it will cut down on the amount of rote they have to do (with Anki, of course!)