Weak and strong verbs.

Talk about needing a linguist. I've bout given up hope of ever seeing rbarr here (remember rbarr?) but there's always NicholasW (anybody seen *him lately?). Rbarr once back where I first met her did a whole thing on shined vs. shone that explained it so nicely. Problem is some verbs became strong even when they shouldn't have (strive, strove, striven as opposed to strive, strived, strived {you hear both}) others (jive, jove....no wait, jive, jived, jived) grew up weak. What made the one or the other in OE probably predates English and is best left to the professionals to explain. As CapK points out for foreignians learning English it's pretty much a matter of rote learning.