1130: Different Ways People use 'Was' and 'Were' Jan 12, 2018

Though there is something to be said for the regularity of strong verbs or strong nouns, which often are called irregular because they do not use '-ed' in the past tense nor pluralize with '-ed' respectively, everyone would agree that 'to be' is irregular. Not only are the present forms: "am; are; is" irregular, but also the past tense forms do not follow any apparent structure. In Standard English, in the first and third person forms 'was' and 'were' are divided by singular and plural subjects, i.e. 'I was' and 'she was' but 'we were' and 'they were'. Nevertheless, to make matters more confusing, many other nonstandard dialects (which is not the same as 'ungrammatical') reverse this, and would say either 'I were' for example, or 'they was'. Furthermore, in some parts of the UK, people are more likely to just use 'was' in positive constructions, but 'weren't' in negative ones, e.g. 'I was going to do that' but 'I weren't going to do that'. You can now support Word Facts on Patreon for new things and to help make the content better: https://www.patreon.com/wordfacts.