All Rhyme, No Reason

I was thinking about how weird English is. For example, think of the different pronounciation of these words ending in 'ough': 'bough', 'cough', 'dough', 'rough'.

Here's what Nordlinger had today:

Jay,

You've been talking about how difficult English must be for foreigners [not to mention us]. Consider the conjugation of four-letter words that end in "ake":

Bake, baked, baked.

Make, made, made.

Take, took, taken.

Wake, woke, waken.

Now ask your random foreigner to speculate on the conjugation of fake, quake, rake, shake.