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go & went

In beginner's English grammar books you were probably told that "to go" is just a freak irregular verb with a past tense of "went." But that's not really correct. There were two verbs for "to go" in English for a long time: "to go" and "to wend." I go, you go, he goes ... I wend, you wend, he wends. Past tense: goed and went. Past perfect: gone and wended.

Maybe "goed" sounded too much like "goad," so it just went away. In any case, the words battled it out over the centuries, and we ended up using all of the verb "to go," except for that one throwback ... "went."

That's not the worst of it. Try figuring out "to be!"
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