Irregular Verbs In English

For learners of English, the past tense of irregular verbs is pure horror. But it doesn’t have to be! Most of the time, all you really need is an overview to wrap your head around the business of irregular verbs. Add some easy to remember rules and suddenly irregular verbs aren’t as scary anymore.

 

In an earlier article we have already looked at the past tense of catch, bring, buy, etc. Now, it’s time to have a look at the remaining irregular verbs!

 

Groups Of Irregular Verbs

Irregular verbs can be divided into groups that all share a similar behavior. Grouping them gives you a great overview and makes it easier to learn the groups’ members by heart.

1. Same Form
2. Vowel Change
3. Different Endings
4. Completely Different Forms
5. More Than One Form

 

Same Form

Some irregular verbs in English have the same form in their infinitive, simple past, and past participle. Check out these examples and you will see that all forms look exactly the same even though they may differ in pronunciation:

infinitive	simple past	past participle
cost	cost	cost
cut	cut	cut
hit	hit	hit
put	put	put
read	read	read

 

Vowel Change

Many irregular vowels differ between infinitive and simple past with regard to their vowel. Following are some examples:

infinitive	simple past	past participle
beat	beat	beaten
become	became	become
break	broke	broken
feed	fed	fed
ride	rode	ridden

 

Looking at the table above, you can group these irregulars even further, namely with regard to how the forms differ from one another.

1. infinitive and simple past are the same (cf. beat)
2. infinitive and past participle are the same (cf. become)
3. simple past and part participle are the same (cf. feed)
4. all three forms are different (cf. break and ride)

 

Different Endings

Another group to put irregular verbs into is those where the ending differs between infinitive and the past forms. The vowel changes in these cases oftentimes as well.

infinitive	simple past	past participle
bend	bent	bent
buy	bought	bought
creep	crept	cept
pay	paid	paid
tell	told	told

 

 

Completely Different Forms

The irregular verb go has completely different forms for it’s simple past that can hardly be derived from the infinitive:

infinitive	simple past	past participle
go	went	gone

 

More Than One Form

The last group of irregular verbs to look at has not only one, but two forms for the simple past. Sometimes, one form is more common than the other, or preferred by a different group of speakers (e.g. American and British English). Here are some examples:

infinitive	form 1	form 2
dream	dreamt	dreamed
kneel	knelt	kneeled
lean	leant	leaned
shine	shone	shined
spit	spit	spat