Dear Language Nerd, My English Second Language teacher last year always said to us, “Do you know the secret way to learn the irregular verbs? … Memorize them all!” Ha ha ha, right? But is there a better way? From Andrew *** Dear Andrew, I won’t lie, you’re going to have to do some memorizing. […]
Dear Language Nerd,Why do we say stretched, fetched, and retched, but wretchèd? -Delphine Sultzer *** Dear Delphine, Because the first three are verbs and the last one’s an adjective. English has a lot of rules (shocking, I know) about pronunciation. We lucky native speakers use them all the time without ever realizing, and the regular-past-tense-ending […]