Look at how “ough” is pronounced. As in tough, though, through and thought.

Is it any wonder there are problems?

Weak verbs generally follow a very definable pattern, for example: I play basketball, I played basketball, I have played basketball, etc. English weak verb conjugation is quite simple, we add -ed for past tense and such.

Strong verbs, however, follow rules that are usually unique only to that verb of a select number of verbs and so on.

Strong verbs are actually some of the oldest words in any language, following ancient grammatical rules that had the stem of the word (rather than just the ending) change on the context.

Weak verbs tend to be much newer words and thus follow newer rules (conjugate the ending, not the stem).

I love English and I love its idiosyncrasies…..you won’t find another verb that changes from ‘eek’ to ‘ought’ than seek…..but that’s its fascination!