 Irregular verbs in English. Finally explained. Irregular verbs in English can be quite confusing. There are so many seemingly unrelated forms for English verbs. This video will help you see relationships between various types of irregular verbs in English so that you can make some sense of it all. The source of this material is eslgold.com. The key to understanding irregular verbs in English is to look for and notice the patterns. Here's an overview of the patterns that we're going to be explaining in this video. As you can see, we've divided them up into 21 different patterns and we've also included a 22nd one, which is the verb B, which is kind of a special case. We'll start with the easiest ones. Verbs like hit. Verbs like hit do not change in the past or the past participle. As you can see here, with hit you have the same form in the base form, the past form, and the past participle form. Hit, hit, hit. You can see other examples like cut, cut, cut, let, let, let, put, put, put. There's no change in the different forms of the verb. The only change comes with the S form. Now the S form of the verb is used with the third person singular subjects such as he, she, the man, the woman, the dog, it. And that requires an S. Hits, cuts, lets, puts. Now you'll also notice something interesting about the ING form for these verbs. You'll notice that most of these end with the letter T or the T sound. And because of the short vowel in these verbs, the final T is doubled before adding the ING. The only ones that are different are the two at the bottom, burst and cast. We don't need to double the T there because there's already a consonant before the final T. Now we have some variations on verbs like hit. For example, with the verb spread, it follows the same pattern in that the past and the past participle are exactly the same as the base form. Spread, spread, spread. The difference here is this one ends with a D sound and in the ING form the D sound is not or the D letter is not doubled. The next one is knit, which actually has two acceptable forms in the past and the past participle. It follows the same pattern as hit, knit, knit, knit, but it can also take on a regular verb ending, ED. For example, knitted or knitted in the past and past participle. Notice that the T is also doubled before you add the ED ending in this case. Then we have spit. Spit has two different forms in the past and the past participle. It follows the basic same structure as hit, spit, spit, spit, but also acceptable in the past is spat and spat. So there are two different forms that can be used. Now, the next one, sit, is not exactly the same as hit, but it follows a pattern that was used with the verb spit in that it changes to an apt sound. So it goes sit, sat, sat. The last one, cost, follows the same pattern as the others, cost, cost, cost, but there's something different with the ING form. Cost is what we call a non-action verb. That means we don't normally use this with the ING form. For example, you would not say that is costing five dollars. Number two is verbs like feed. Now you'll need to notice the sound shifts in the past and the past participle. Verbs like feed shift vowel sounds in the past and the past participle, usually from long E to short E. Let's look at some examples. In the base form, it has the E sound in the past and the past participle. Verbs like these have the S sound. So you can see how it goes, bleed, bled, bled, breed, bred, bred, feed, fed, fed, speed, sped, sped. And the last one actually ends with a T sound instead of a D sound, meet, met, met, but it follows the same pattern. Now we also have some variations on verbs like feed. For example, the verb flee does not have a consonant ending in the base form, but when we convert it to the past and past participle, a consonant sound, D, is added. So it goes flee, fled, fled. The next one is lead. It follows the same pronunciation pattern, lead, bled, bled. However, the spelling is different and this is important for you to see. With the base form, instead of EE for the spelling, it's EA, but the sound is the same. In the past form and in the past participle, there's no A and it is pronounced with a short E sound, led, led. Now that's important for you to remember because the last one can be kind of confusing. And this is the verb read. With read, when we go into the past and the past participle, we also change the sound. Read, read, read. But for some reason, the spelling is not changed. So it looks the same, but in the past and the past participle, the sound is different. So it sounds like the color red. So again, in the base form, it's read the past red and the past participle red without changing the spelling. The next verbs are verbs like keep. Notice the sound shifts again. Verbs like keep shift vowel sounds in the past and past participle, usually from long E to short E, similar to the ones we just did. The difference is with these kind of verbs, a final T is added. Let's look at some examples. All right, when we go from the base form to the past and past participle, it follows the same pattern as the ones we did before, E, eh, eh. The difference here is they add a final T, creep, crept, crept, keep, kept, kept, sleep, slept, slept, and so forth. Now, the few at the top are all the same in their spelling. But you'll notice when we start with the verb leap, the spelling is changed again from an EE spelling to an EA sound, an EA spelling. But the sound is the same, leap, lept, lept. Now, the thing about leap is it has two forms. One is left, which adds the T sound and keeps it in the short vowel sound. Another form is what we call the regular form, which adds simply an ED ending. And in that case, the sound doesn't change, so it would go leap, lept, lept. Now, you get into other words like deal, mean, dream, and leave. And these also go back to the same pattern, but the pronunciation is different, although the spelling remains the same. So we have deal, delt, delt. Mean, meant, meant. Dream, dreamt, dreamt. Now, dream is another one which has two forms. One is the irregular, dreamt. The other is the regular, dreamed, with an ED. And in that case, the dreamed remains in the long EE sound. Then the last one is leave. It follows the same pattern, leave, lept, lept, with the EH in the past and the past participle and a T ending. In this case, the EA is used in the base form, but only one EE, lept, is used in the past and the past participle. Number four is verbs like swim. Again, you need to notice the sound shifts. Verbs like swim shift vowel sounds in the past and the past participle, usually from EE to an UH. Let's look at some examples. Begin, began, begun. Swim, swam, swum. Drink, drink, drunk. Shrink, shrink, shrunk. Stink, stink, stunk. Now, some people will say stunk in the past tense. Also, we have ring, ring, rung. Sing, sing, sung. Notice again that in these verbs, a different sound is used in the past and another sound is used in the past participle, but the consonant sounds remain the same. With verbs like sting, it follows a very similar pattern, but there's one small difference here. You will have the sound shifts and you notice these sound shifts are a little bit different. Verbs like sting shift vowel sounds in the past and the past participle, usually from EE or EE to UH. The short U sound is commonly pronounced UH in English. Let's look at some examples. We'll start with the verb sing. Now, this is one we mentioned before and we're going to let you see it again to show you the comparison of these different kinds of words. Okay, with sing, it changes in the past and changes again in the past participle. Sing, sing, sung. With spring, we have two forms. Spring, spring, sprung, or in the past, it can be spring, sprung, sprung. Now, this is kind of a transition verb between sing, sing, sung until the next one, cling, clung, clung. Now, you'll notice that the difference here is that in the past tense and the past participle, the sounds are the same. With sing, sing, sung, the past is different from the past participle. With cling, clung, clung, the past and the past participle are the same. So you have things like fling, flung, flung, sling, slung, slung. Now, when we get to the verb hang, this is a special case which depends on the meaning of the verb. For example, if we're talking about hanging up our clothes or hanging a picture, you could say, hang, hung, hung. But if you're talking about hanging a person in order to execute them, the verb hanged is used, which is the regular form instead of hung. Now, the one I want to mention here that confuses a lot of people is the verb bring. Now, with bring, it does not follow the same pattern. We don't say bring, bring, brung, or even bring, brung, brung. For some reason, this uses a different ending in the past and the past participle. So with bring, it is bring, brought, brought, and we'll talk about that a little bit later. Some more verbs which fit this particular pattern as verbs like sting don't have an ng ending, but they follow the same pronunciation pattern. For example, dig, dug, dug, spin, spun, spun, stick, stuck, stuck, strike, struck, struck. Now, with struck, sometimes they use the past participle, stricken. With verbs like send, there is no vowel sound shift in the past and the past participle. But the final d sound is changed to a t. Let's look at some examples. Bend, bent, lent, lent. Send, sent, sent. Spent, spent. Now, that seems easy, but you have to be careful with these because not all of the words that end in e-n-d take on the t ending. Some of them use the regular ed ending. For example, the word end. It's ended in the past participle and in the past. Blend, blended, blended. Mend, mended, mended. So it's a little bit different there. With verbs like find, you'll need to pay attention again to the sound shifts and you'll see the sound shifts here. With verbs like find, they involve a vowel change in the past and the past participle from i to ao. The consonant sounds remain the same. Let's look at some examples. Bind, bound, bound. Find, found, found. Grind, ground, ground. Wind, wound, wound. Now, not all of the verbs that have an i-n-d ending follow this pattern. In some cases, they follow a regular ed ending. For example, mind, minded, and minded. The next one is verbs like build. For verbs like build, a final t is added or the final sound is changed from a d to a t. The original vowel sound doesn't change. For example, spill, spilt, spilt. We can also use the regular verb ending here. Spilled, spilled. Build, built, built. Burn, burnt, burnt. And here you can also use the regular ed ending. Burn, burned, burned. The next one is verbs like think. Verbs like think use ought or ought in the past and past participle. Here are some examples. Think, thought, thought. Bring, brought, brought. We mentioned that one before. Buy, bought, bought. Seek, sought, sought. Fight, fought, fought. Now the last two have the same sound in the past and the past participle, ought. But the spelling is different. Catch, caught, caught. Teach, taught, taught. Also, you'll notice that with the s form, we have to add an es rather than just a single s. Catches, teaches. Verbs like sell. With some, but not all, verbs like sell, the past and past participle forms are changed to old. Let's look at some examples. Sell, sold, sold. Sell, told, told. Now not all of these follow the same pattern. For example, smell follows the regular pattern with the ed ending. Smell, smelled, smelled. The same goes for yell. Yell, yelled, yelled. And quell, quell, quelled, quelled. Up to now, we've been dealing with verbs that end in a t or a d in the past or the past participle. Now we're going to introduce a new pattern, and that's verbs that end with an n or an en ending. Verbs like choose take on an en ending in the past participle. They also take on the same sound shift in the past and the past participle. Let's look at some examples. Verbs like choose shift to the same vowel sound in the past and the past participle. The difference is that in the past, there is no an ending, but in the past participle, there is an an or en ending. So we have choose, chose, chosen, freeze, froze, frozen, speak, spoke, spoken, still, stole, stolen. Now an interesting one is the verb swell. In the past participle, we have swollen, but in the past, we usually use the ed or regular verb ending. Not many people will say swell. Most people will say swelled. Now there's another thing interesting about some of these words, and that is what we call the silent e. If you look at the base form of choose, there is an e at the end of the word. However, this e does not have a sound of its own. It's what we call the silent e. Now what happens is when we add the ing ending, we have to drop the silent e. So that happens in words like choose, to choosing, freeze, to freezing, wake, to waking, and weave, to weaving. Where the final e in the base form is dropped before the ing ending is added in the ing form. Now there are some more verbs that follow the same pattern in that they use the same vowel sound in both the past and the past participle. However, in the past there is no en ending, but in the past participle there is. Let's look at some examples. Get, got, gotten. Forget, forgot, forgotten. And then the last three. Bite, bit, bitten. Hide, hid, hidden. And slide, slid, slid. Not many people will say slidden. They simply use the past and the past participle form, slid. Number 12, verbs like ride. Now these are slightly different from the ones we discussed before. Verbs like ride take on an en ending in the past participle. They take on a different sound shift in the past and the past participle. So the two sounds in the past and the past participle are different. Let's look at some examples. Let's start with the verb ride in this case. You'll notice that with ride it shifts sound in the past ride road. And then it shifts to another vowel sound in the past participle. So it's ride, rode, ridden. Two different sounds, vowel sounds in the past and the past participle. But the other sounds remain the same. The consonant sounds remain the same. So let's look at some examples. Drive, drove, driven. Ride, rode, ridden. Rise, rose, risen. Ride, rode, ridden. Smite, smote, smitten. Now the next set, the ones in purple, follow the same pattern in that they have a different sound in the past from the sound in the past participle. So let's look at the verb give. Give, gave, given. Forbid, forbade, forbidden. Now some people say for bad in the past tense. But it follows the same pattern in that it starts with one sound, shifts to a different sound in the past, and then shifts again to another sound in the past participle. Let's look at the third set, the ones in blue. These go from one sound to another, and then they come back to the original sound. For example, take, took, taken. You'll notice that there's a sound shift in the past, and then they go back to the original sound, a, in the past participle. Forsake, forsook, forsaken. Mistake, mistook, mistaken. Shake, shook, shaken. With the purple ones, it follows the same pattern in that it returns to the original base form when pronounced in the past participle. Give, gave, given. Now we'll see some variations on verbs like ride. Notice that they have the same en ending, but the past tense is going to be different. For example, eat, ate, eaten. Beat, beat, beaten. Now notice with beat, there is the same word in the base form and the past form. Kind of like hit, but the past participle has an en ending. Then last is fall, fell, fallen. This one returns to the original sound, fall, fallen. Val sound in the past participle. Verbs like grow also have an n ending, but it's not an en ending. For example, verbs like grow shift vowel sounds in the past and the past participle. They also take on the w n ending in the past participle. Let's look at some examples. Blow, blew, blown. Fly, flew, flown. Grow, grew, grown. Know, knew, known. Throw, threw, thrown. Now an interesting one, a variation on this would be the verb show. Instead of doing the e w ending in the past, we show follows an e d regular verb ending in the past show, showed, shown. Now the last two are a little bit different in that they don't end with o w n. They end with a w n, and that's basically because in the original base form you already have an a w. But it follows the same pattern in the past draw, drew, drawn. Withdraw, withdrew, withdrawn. Fourteen, verbs like where. Verbs like where shift vowel sounds in the past and past participle. They also take on the r n ending in the past participle. Let's look at some examples. With verbs like where, there is a sound shift in the past and past participle, and it's the same vowel sound in both those forms. But the difference here is that in the past participle, there is an n ending. Look at the examples. Bear, bore, borne. Swear, swore, sworn. Where, wore, worn. Tear, tore, torn. Verbs like come are very interesting. They shift vowel sounds in the past and use the base form in the past participle. Here are some examples. Come, came, come. Become, became, become. Run, ran, run. With verbs like when, notice the sound shifts again. Verbs like when shift to the same vowel sounds in both the past and past participle. But for individual verbs in this category, the specific sound shift is unique to the verb. The consonant sounds remain the same. Let's look at some examples. Shoot, shot, shot. Win, won, won. Hold, held, held. Light, lit, lit. Now with light, they also have a regular past and past participle ending. You could say light, lighted, lighted. Verbs like make. With verbs like make, the vowel sounds remain the same in the past and past participle. But the final consonant sound is changed to a D. For example, make, made, made. Have, had, had. Now with the verb have, it has a special form for the S form. We don't say habs, we say has. Verbs like pay use an AID ending in the past and the past participle. Let's look at some examples. Lay, laid, laid. Pay, paid, paid. Now look at the next one. With this one, the spelling is the same as the ones above. However, the pronunciation is different. Say, said, said. The pronunciation is a short E sound, eh, said, in both the past and the past participle. Also, with the S form, we don't say says, we say says, short E eh sound. The last one is play. Now with play, this is a regular verb, so it doesn't change the ending. It uses the ED ending, but the pronunciation is similar to the ones above. Play, played, played. 19. Verbs like stand. Verbs like stand change both the vowel and the consonant sound in the past and the past participle. For example, stand, stood, stood. Understand, understood, understood. Hear, heard, heard. Lose, lost, lost. Notice that you have a sound change in both the vowel and the final consonant. These verbs are not exactly the same, but they do have some similarities. Verbs like do and go have completely different forms in the past. In the S form and the past participle, they follow the same spelling patterns, but the pronunciation of the vowel sounds is different. Let's look at the examples. Now with these two verbs, do and go, you'll notice that the spelling is almost exactly the same for the endings except for in the past tense when these two verbs take on different forms. However, the pronunciation is completely different. For example, do and go both end in an O, but one is pronounced do, the other one is pronounced with an O sound go. For the S form, they both have OES as their ending, but do is pronounced does, go is pronounced goes in the S form. Then of course the past forms of these two verbs are completely different, did and went. Now in the past participle, the spelling of the ending is the same, but the pronunciation is different. O-N-E with do is pronounced done. O-N-E with go is pronounced gone. And then the ING forms are the same in the spelling, but different in the pronunciation, doing and going. Other irregular verbs. These verbs do not fit completely into one category, so they are dealt with individually. They do, however, follow some of the patterns mentioned above, as will be explained. Let's look at these on a case-by-case basis. Alright, first the verb C. Notice the sound shift. C, saw, seen. And the past participle takes on an E-N ending, like some of the ones that we've seen before. With the verb sew, the past tense uses a regular verb ending, E-D, sewed. And the past participle takes on the W-N ending, like some of the verbs we mentioned before. So it's like this sew, sewed, sewn. The vowel sound does not change, but one in the past tense requires an E-D ending, and the other, the past participle, requires a W-N ending. The next one is interesting, because it has two separate meanings and two different forms. Shine, shown, shown. Or shine, shined, shined. Now generally, if we're saying something like, the sun shone, that means it exhibited brightness, we would use the first form, shone, shone, for the past and the past participle. However, if we're talking about make something shiny, for example, I shined my shoes, then we would use the regular verb ending, shine, shined, shined, with the E-D. Shave has a couple of different endings in the past participle. It follows a regular form in the past, shave, shaved, but in the past participle, some people say shaven, some people say shaved. With proof, there are also two different forms in the past participle, proven or proved. But the past is simply a regular verb, E-D, proved, proved, proved, proven, or proved, proved, proved. Now dive is interesting, because most people say it as a regular verb. Dive, dived, dived. But a lot of people will use dove in the past tense. I think it's because it's similar to drive and drove. Lie is one verb that can be very confusing for a lot of people, because it has two different meanings. The first one is when you tell an untruth, say something that is false. And that is a regular verb, so it would just take on the D or the E-D ending. Lie, lied, lied. However, when you're talking about the second one, which is a totally different meaning, it can mean like sleep or recline or rest on your back. Lie in the past tense is lay. In the past participle, it is lane. Now for both forms of lie, for the I-N-G form, they have the same spelling, but it's different from other spellings of other verbs. It's L-Y-I-N-G. The last one is the verb be. Now the verb be belongs to a category of its own. For all other verbs, the base form can be used. After modals, for example, I might eat, he can't eat, people will eat. After two forms, we do eat, she does eat, the man did eat. Three in the infinitive form, for example, to eat. And four in the simple present tense, along with subjects in the first and second person, as well as third person plural. For example, I eat, you eat, they eat, the kids eat. However, the verb be is only used in these conditions. Number one, after modals, for example, he will be, they might be. Occasionally, it's used after do, for example, do be careful, don't be shy. And third, in the infinitive form, for example, to be. However, in the simple present tense, with subjects in the first and second person, as well as third person plural, the words am and are are used. For example, I am, you are, they are, the kids far. In the third person singular, the S form is is used. The verb be is used in a few situations, but not all. For example, it's used with modals. Can be, could be, will be. Or in the infinitive form, to be. And once in a while, with do, do be careful, don't be shy. But with most subjects, you use the verb are, they are, we are, you are. And of course, with I as a subject, you would use am, I am. The S form is used with third person singular subjects. He is, she is, it is. Now, the past has two forms. This is the only verb that has two different forms for the past tense. It's a little bit confusing because was is used in the third person singular. He was, she was, it was. It is also used with the subject I, I was. Were is used with everything else. You were, they were, we were. The past participle of be is been. And the I and G form is being.