Korean Job Discussion Forums

[jay-shi]

Interesting article.

Verbs evolve and homogenize at a rate inversely proportional to their prevalence in the English language, according to a formula developed by Harvard University mathematicians who've invoked evolutionary principles to study our language over the past 1,200 years, from "Beowulf" to "Canterbury Tales" to "Harry Potter."

Writing this week in the journal Nature, Erez Lieberman, Jean-Baptiste Michel, and colleagues in Harvard's Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, led by Martin A. Nowak, conceive of linguistic development as an essentially evolutionary scheme: Just as genes and organisms undergo natural selection, words -- specifically, irregular verbs that do not take an "-ed" ending in the past tense -- are subject to powerful pressure to "regularize" as the language develops.

Full text here :
http://www.sciencecodex.com/harvard_scientists_predict_the_future_of_the_past_tense

[diablo3]

I beed in Korea before and goed to Seoul. I haved many Korean friends and we always eated together.

Irregular verbs are a part of many European languages, and hopefully less use of irregular verbs makes it easier to learn English (and some other European languages)

[Ya-ta Boy]

That was interesting. I'm curious what they think the effect of general literacy will have on the future life of irregular verbs.

[SPINOZA]

deleted

[xtchr]

Regularize is a word? Yikes.
I won't be using it for pronunciation practice with Korean students.