At one time, the "irregular" verbs were regular: English (or rather Proto-Germanic, the common ancestor language of English, German, Swedish, etc.) had two clas

At one time, the "irregular" verbs were regular: English (or rather Proto-Germanic, the common ancestor language of English, German, Swedish, etc.) had two classes of regular verbs, strong and weak, and newly invented verbs could be added to either class. However, the strong class over time became somewhat obsolete and irregular, and is now relatively closed to adding new members (though not completely: sneak/snuck, dive/dove and shit/shat are relatively new additions -- certainly long post-dating the irregularization).