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Communication & Conflict

English Would Be Much Easier If We Stopped Making Up Words Like “Fought”

An entirely reasonable proposal to fix a language that has clearly gotten out of hand.

Royce White August 27, 2026 6-minute read

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I have decided that the English language needs to be repaired. I realize this is an ambitious undertaking, particularly because English has been under development for roughly 1,500 years and is currently being used by approximately 1.5 billion people, none of whom have asked me to repair it. This has never stopped me before.

The problem is that English teachers have been telling us for generations that verbs have rules. This is demonstrably false. Verbs have suggestions, which they follow until approximately the fourth grade, at which point they begin drinking. No wonder I flunked 10th grade English…

Consider the verb fight. Today I fight. Yesterday I fought.

No. Yesterday I fighted.

This is not difficult. We already have the word fight. We merely add “ed,” which is the system English itself claims to use. Everybody goes home early.

Instead, at some point hundreds of years ago, a group of people apparently gathered around a large wooden table with piles of meat and large pewter mugs of ale and said, “We need a past tense for fight.” One person suggested fighted. He was immediately killed. Thus we got fought.

This same linguistic criminal enterprise gave us:

teach to taught
bring to brought
catch to caught
think to thought

These are not conjugations. These are spelling accidents. Under the Royce English Reform Act, which I expect Congress to pass unanimously as soon as Congress finishes whatever it is Congress does, which is probably worse than these current issues, but I digress… these verbs will become:

teach to teached
bring to bringed
catch to catched
think to thinked

See how easy this is? Children could learn English in approximately eleven minutes. We could use the remaining twelve years of school to teach them useful things, such as how mortgages work, compound interest, and how to talk to a live person at Amazon.

Then we come to run. Today I run. Yesterday I ran. Why? Nobody knows. The correct answer is obviously runned.

“I runned five miles yesterday.”

There. You understood me perfectly. Civilization did not collapse. NATO remains intact.

The situation becomes even worse with go. Today I go. Yesterday I went. Excuse me? At least fought contains several letters that can be found somewhere near fight. Went is not even pretending to be related to go. It appears to have wandered into the language from another family and assumed a false identity.

I believe this requires a congressional hearing.

“Please state your name for the record.”

“Went.”

“And what is your relationship to the verb go?”

“I am its past tense.”

“Sir, I remind you that you are under oath.”

Under my system, the past tense of go is goed, as God and phonics intended.

I became fully aware of the English language conspiracy years ago when I studied Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament. Greek looked at me and said, “Here is a verb. We are now going to attach information to it so that you can determine tense, voice, mood, person, and number.”

I thought, This is magnificent.

English said, “Mouse.”

I said, “Fine. More than one?”

English said, “Mice.”

“Why?”

“Because shut up.”

This is an actual grammatical principle in English. Scholars call it the Because Shut Up Rule, and it accounts for approximately 63 percent of the language.

For example: one house. Two houses. Excellent. One mouse. Two mice. Wait.

If that is the rule, then one spouse should become two spice. This is not merely logical. It is beautiful.

My wife and I have been married 48 years, which means we are officially spice. I intend to begin introducing us this way: “Hello, I’m Royce, and this is my spice.”

I anticipate that this will create some confusion at church, but confusion is how language grows.

English does this everywhere. One goose becomes two geese, so logically one moose should become two meese. Yet apparently it does not. One moose becomes two moose, which means the moose has simply refused to participate in grammar.

I respect this.

Then there is swim. Today I swim. Yesterday I swam. I have swum. Now we’re just making noises, like farting in a barrel.

The obvious system is:

Today I swim.
Yesterday I swimmed.
Previously I had swimmed.

Done.

Likewise:

Today I eat.
Yesterday I eated.

Today I write.
Yesterday I writed.

Today I buy.
Yesterday I buyed.

Today I speak.
Yesterday I speaked.

English teachers will object that these forms “sound wrong.” Of course they sound wrong. You have spent your entire life being conditioned by Big Grammar. This is precisely what they want you to think.

I particularly object to the so-called “irregular verb.” Calling a verb irregular is a clever way of blaming the verb for a system designed by lunatics. The verb is not irregular. English is irregular.

If I build a staircase with seventeen steps, except the sixth step is four inches taller, the ninth step is carpeted vertically, and the thirteenth step has been replaced by a live chicken, I do not get to say, “Watch out for the irregular steps.” I built a bad staircase.

This is English.

To be fair, Koine Greek eventually retaliated. Just when I thought I had discovered the Promised Land of orderly language, Greek introduced principal parts, contract verbs, μι-verbs, participles, and various forms that appeared to have been assembled in the dark by theologians using leftover alphabet. Still, Greek at least had the decency to admit what it was doing.

English smiles pleasantly and says, “Here is the rule.” Then five minutes later: “Except this word.” Fine. “And these 47 words.” Fine. “And every word you will need on the test.”

At some point we have to say enough.

Therefore, effective immediately, I am implementing the Royce English Reform Act. All verbs will follow the rules. All plurals will behave themselves. Went will be returned to wherever it came from. Fought will be placed in a government facility pending further investigation.

Children will say: “Yesterday I goed outside, runned down the street, catched a ball, throwed it to Billy, then we fighted because he sayed I cheated.”

And every English teacher in America will clutch her chest. Yet we will know exactly what the child means, which, unless I have badly misunderstood the purpose of language, is kind of the point.

I have thinked about this for a long time. I have readed the evidence, speaked with myself extensively, and goed back and forth on the issue. I have finally maked up my mind.

English is now fixed.

You’re welcome.

Reflection and response

2 responses

  1. Well I thinked that you would have included the absurd breaking up in bygone years of the precious adverb alot.

    Honey, I’ll love you a lot, but only for awhile.

    Thanks, but how many square feet is that lot, where is it located, and how many previous owners are there?

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