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CONTENTS FEATURE: Learn to cope with verbs that regularly misbehave GRAMMAR COACH: Fielding your questions FINDER'S FEE: Recommend a friend—and earn up to $500 FEATURE: Learn to cope with verbs that regularly misbehave      Of roughly 5,000 languages that exist in the World today, English is among the most difficult to learn and master. That's largely due to the prevalence of inconsistencies and complex rule exceptions — notably, irregular verb formations that can cause trouble even for native English speakers. That's evident when you hear someone say, "Greg hasn't ate lunch yet" or "Sharon seen her cousins last weekend."      Verbs exhibit changes of form or "inflection" to indicate variations in tense or time element. English has thousands of well-behaving "regular" verbs that conform to a consistent pattern of conjugation; their past tense is formed by adding either "d" or "ed" to the infinitive verb — for example, the past tense of "dance" is "danced"; "rain" becomes "rained"; "help" becomes "helped." That convention gets twisted with "irregular" verbs — which can confound people who grew up in a non-English-speaking culture. That's what prompted Ken H. to ask us for advice.      Ken wrote, "I am coaching a woman who is Chinese and for whom English is a second language. She is very bright and accomplished, but some of her English skills get in the way of her ability to be fully understood. In reviewing her case write-ups, [I see that] she often would write something along the lines of: 'Cathy don't have the awareness to....' Of course, I can correct her, but that does little to help her understand why don't needs to be doesn't in this instance. I have written the following explanation, but I am not sure it really conveys the usage rules."      Ken continued, "She recognizes that don't is a contraction of do not, just as doesn't is a contraction of does not. I've told her, 'Suppose you want to say that someone does not like sushi.' You would say, 'I don't like sushi' (first person) or 'you don't like sushi' (second person) or 'we don't like sushi' (first person plural). I affirm that she sees how do not and don't work for the first and second person categories of speaking.      "I explained that when we switch to the third person — which is 'she,' 'he' or a proper name like 'Angie' or 'Ken' — instead of saying do not or don't we say does not or doesn't, as in 'she does not like sushi' or 'he doesn't like sushi' or 'Ken does not like sushi' or 'Angie doesn't like sushi.'      "Likewise," Ken added, "when I am observing and assessing someone, I will say 'Angie has keen intuition as a coach but she doesn't have the polished skills of someone who has been practicing for a long time.' I am sure this could be tightened up by someone who actually understands how to explain the whys and wherefores of our twisted Mother Tongue. Can you tell me if I am on target or not?"      Ken was on the right track.      The verb "do" is an "irregular verb"; that is, its past tense and past participle are formed in an unusual way. The list of irregular verbs in English is frustratingly long, numbering in the hundreds. It includes "begin" (began, begun), "blow" (blew, blown), "choose" (chose, chosen), "swim" (swam, swum), "fall" (fell, fallen), "go" (went, gone), "see" (saw, seen), "lie" (lay, lain), "sleep" (slept, slept) and "write" (wrote, written).      In addition to changes in inflection to indicate tense, verbs also change their form to show "person" or "voice" — as Ken observed — and to agree in number with their objects or complements.      For some verbs, all those variables can be mighty complicated. Many native English-language speakers have trouble with the seemingly illogical exceptions to the rules, so mastering those misbehaving irregular verbs is even more difficult for someone whose first language is one other than English.      The sentence about which Ken's friend is puzzled ("Cathy don't have the awareness to....") is in present tense — in which the verb "do" performs much like regular verbs. It becomes more erratic in its past and participial forms. For the sake of comparison, here is a chart listing the present- and past-tense and participial forms of a regular verb ("walk") along with the irregular verb "do." PRESENT TENSE WALK DO first-person singular I walk I do second-person singular you walk you do third-person singular he, she, it walks he, she, it does first-person plural we walk we do second-person plural all of you walk all of you do third-person plural they walk they do PAST TENSE walked did PRESENT PARTICIPLE walking doing PAST PARTICIPLE have walked have done      Here are the properly applied inflections in Ken's example sentences. • First-person singular: I do not (don't) like sushi. • Second-person singular: You do not (don't) like sushi. • Third-person singular: He does not (doesn't) like sushi. • First-person plural: We do not (don't) like sushi. • Second-person plural: The three of you do not (don't) like sushi. • Third-person plural: They do not (don't) like sushi.      With the verb "do," all present-tense forms are consistent ("do"), with the exception of third-person singular (which is true of many regular verbs as well). The third-person singular voice requires an "s" or "es" ending: Ken walks every afternoon. Ken does not (doesn't) like Sushi.      On the Web, you'll find numerous lists of irregular verbs, including one from the Purdue Online Writing Lab, that display conjugated forms of a verb that you enter. Aside from memorization, the best learning tool is development of familiarity. Ken's colleague will undoubtedly improve her understanding of English and her confidence in her own linguistic abilities by listening carefully to proper English speech, and observing patterns of English syntax and grammar in the literate materials she reads. Numerous verb conjugation databases are on the Web. Here are links to four of them: http://www.verbix.com/languages/english.shtml (from the Verbix nonprofit organization) http://morphadorner.northwestern.edu/morphadorner/conjugator/example/ (from MorphAdorner at Northwestern University) http://conjugator.reverso.net/conjugation-english.html (from Reverso) http://www.scientificpsychic.com/grammar/regular.html (from Scientific Psychic) Other useful resources include: Online English Verb Conjugation Trainer Gallaudet University's "English Works!" tutorial on regular and irregular verbs (Gallaudet University is a leading institution of higher education for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. For Americans who have been deaf since birth or childhood and grew up communicating with American Sign Language [ASL], English is a second language because ASL has a syntax that more closely resembles French.)      Now Cathy does have the awareness to improve her knowledge of English verb conjugation and thereby communicate with greater confidence. GRAMMAR COACH: Fielding your questions 1. Judith A. wrote:      "I am totally confused about this: should our club be called Firelands Glee Club [name intentionally changed] or Firelands' Glee Club [with an apostrophe]? Your help would be greatly appreciated." The grammar coach replies:      The answer to your question lies in determination of whether "Firelands" in your example is an attributive or genitive noun. The Firelands is a geographic region of northwestern Ohio. It was so named because the land was set aside in the late 18th century for homesteading by residents of Connecticut who had lost their homes to fire during the Revolutionary War. Many organizations today take their name from that historic reference, typically shortening it to simply "Firelands." Among them are Firelands Regional Medical Center in Sandusky, Ohio; Firelands Federal Credit Union in Bellevue, Ohio; and Firelands Museum in Norwalk, Ohio. Note that all of them properly exclude an apostrophe in the name. No apostrophe is needed because in those names, "Firelands" is serving as an attributive noun, rather than a genitive noun. That use is analogous to other names with geographic references, such as Cleveland Clinic and Cincinnati Reds. Likewise, an apostrophe should not be used in the name of your organization; Firelands Glee Club is correct. Please see the October 2009 edition of EditPros News for a more detailed explanation. 2. Scot A. wrote:      "It seems to me that many people these days habitually give rude, crude or nonsensical answers to expressions of gratitude or welcoming statements. For example, when I say 'thank you,' I think that deserves a more courteous response than 'no problem.' And I'm bothered when a radio talk show host graciously tells a guest 'thank you for joining us on the show today,' to which the guest replies, 'not at all.' Not at all WHAT? I find that a mindless, insulting response. Do you agree, or do you think I'm being overly sensitive about the obvious decline of civility in contemporary society?" The grammar coach replies:           First, Scot, thank you for writing. We appreciate your confidence in our assessment and opinions.      As you probably suspect, we agree with you about those and other "automated" responses that people utter.      We're more bothered by "no problem" as a response than by "not at all." When someone responds to an expression of thanks by saying "no problem," the insinuation is that the request was, indeed, at least mildly bothersome. For example, imagine that a shopper told a salesperson, "I'd like to buy that coffee mug, if you have it in blue." The salesperson went to the stockroom and returned with a blue cup. The customer said "thank you" — to which the salesperson replied, "no problem." The customer was led to think that such a request is problematic or annoying, but the sales clerk was willing to dismiss the inconvenience: "no problem." That sounds like a grudging acknowledgment.      "Not at all" is an out-of-context reply to a part of the conversation that was omitted. If the talk show host had said, "Thank you for joining us today. I know you had to go out of your way to be here," then "not at all" would have been a contextually logical reply. A reply of "not at all" in response to "thank you" is loaded with an implication that difficulty was involved in filling the request. For that reason, it sounds somewhat disingenuous.      "Yup" is another flippant response that's only one notch above a grunt.      "That was my pleasure," "certainly," "I'm happy to help," "of course," "anytime, "don't mention it" and "you're welcome" are more mannerly, gracious responses to an expression of thanks.      Are you perplexed by some aspect of grammar or word usage? 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