Predicting the future of the past tense
“Although fewer than 3 percent of modern English verbs are irregular, this number includes the 10 most common verbs: be, have, do, go, say, can, will, see, take, and get. Lieberman, Michel, and colleagues expect that some 15 of the 98 modern irregular verbs they studied — although likely none of these top 10 — will regularize in the next 500 years.”
One of the things my foreign friends find most difficult about the English language is the conjugation of irregular verbs. According to this report, things aren’t going to get much easier in the next half millennium. But then most languages have irregular verbs – often the same verbs – and at least English does not have declension of nouns.
If you want to avoid both conjugation of verbs and declension of nouns, try leaning Mandarin. The trouble here is the pronunciation. Every character can be pronounced in one of four tones which give utterly different meanings to the same symbol. You can read my take on the ‘Chinese’ language here.