English

Conjugate Verbs

Facts

  • Language: English
  • Alternate names:
  • Language code: eng
  • Language family: Indo-European, Classical Indo-European, Germanic, Northwest Germanic, West Germanic, North Sea Germanic, Anglo-Frisian, Anglic, Later Anglic, Middle-Modern English, Macro-English
  • Earlier forms: Early Modern English.
  • Number of speakers: 309352280
  • Script: Latin script

More information:

    Introduction

    English belongs to the Western group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is most closely related to Low German dialects in northern Germany and to Dutch, sharing with them the absence of the Second Sound Shift which occurred around 600 AD.

    English is descended from the language spoken in the English Isles by the Germanic tribes, the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who came to the British Isles around 450 AD and drove the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants to areas that are now Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland. The dialects spoken by these invaders formed the basis of Old English, which was also strongly influenced by Old Norse, spoken by the Viking invaders of the 8th-9th centuries.

    For the 300 years after the Norman Conquest in 1066, the kings of England spoke only French. During this time, a large number of French words were assimilated into Old English, which also lost most of its inflections. The resulting language is known as Middle English.

    The verb

    English verbs have the following features:

    Sample verb: walk

    Present Past Imperative
    Sg.1 walk walked -
    Sg.2 walk / walkest 1 walked / walkedst 1 walk!
    Sg.3 walks / walketh 2 walked -
    Pl.1 walk walked -
    Pl.2 walk walked walk!
    Pl.3 walk walked -

    Notes:

    1. This form is archaic and used with pronoun 'thou', e.g., thou walkest
    2. This form is archaic.

    These archaic forms are not shown in Verbix on-line conjugator.

    Verblists

    Texts

    Paralleltexts

    Notes

    References