It's an old english thing, classing verbs as weak or strong. (and nouns) the titles are arbitrary, but in general there are two broad classes of verb in anglo saxon- weak verbs, which form their past tenses by adding a dental consonant as suffix (d or t), and strong verbs, which form their past tenses by changing the stem vowel. Weak verbs have become the dominant verb paradigm in modern english, but a few 'irregular' verbs still hang onto all or part of the strong verb paradigm.
English nouns have more or less hung onto the old english strong noun class- 'es' for genitive becomes our apostrophe-s of possession; 'as' for plural simply becomes s, and the rest of the cases slink away into the darkness. A few weird nouns still hang around, though, like man/men, mouse/mice, and these are descended from Old English 'athematic' nouns, which change their stem vowel.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-02-22 12:20 pm (UTC)English nouns have more or less hung onto the old english strong noun class- 'es' for genitive becomes our apostrophe-s of possession; 'as' for plural simply becomes s, and the rest of the cases slink away into the darkness. A few weird nouns still hang around, though, like man/men, mouse/mice, and these are descended from Old English 'athematic' nouns, which change their stem vowel.
there you go. you are now Educated.