What are the irregular past tense verbs in English?

What are the irregular past tense verbs in English?

Irregular verbs are verbs that do not follow the normal patterns for tense and past participle. While most English regular verbs use the ending “-ed” for the past tense and participle forms, irregular verbs each have their own unique tense forms and past participles. For example, the verb "drink", we form its past tense by changing its spelling and we say "drank".

Let's use them in a sentence:

I drink a lot of water every day.

I drank a lot of beer last night.

More examples:

Verb: eat

I eat two eggs a day.

I ate a sandwich yesterday.

Please remember:

In most cases, irregular verbs change its spelling and pronunciation to form the past tense or past participle. In addition, you can try to familiarize those verbs that take irregular past tense.

What are the irregular past tense verbs in English?

Hold on....it's a long list. And you are going to need to memorize it.

Past Tense Verbs

• REGULAR VERBS - When a regular verb is conjugated (changed to each verb form), the past tense and past participle (have + past) of the verb adds either an "-ed" (want = wanted, look = looked, stop = stopped) or a "-d" (use = used, love = loved, like = liked).

• IRREGULAR VERBS - Do NOT follow the rules for past tense and past participle. While most English regular verbs use the ending “-ed” or "-d" for the past tense and participle forms, irregular verbs each have their own unique tense forms and past participles, AND they’re all a little different.

  
  

  Sorry, no choice but to memorize each one, along with their special irregular verb forms. 

Irregular Verbs in Practice

• A regular Verb: need or dance

  • NEED

    • Present: I need to go to the store.

    • Past: I needed to by milk yesterday.

    • Past Participle: I have needed to look for a new cookbook too.

  • DANCE

    • Present: I dance everyday.

    • Past: I danced at the wedding.

    • Past Participle: I have danced since I was three.

• An Irregular Verb: sing or sleep

  • SING

    • Present: I sing for fun.

    • Past: I sang at the norebang for my birthday.

    • Past Participle: I have sung for large crowds

  • SLEEP

    • Present: I sleep in a large bed.

    • Past: I slept well last night.

    • Past Participle: I have slept in a hotel.

Common Irregular Verbs List

Try this video to help you pronounce the words.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6sVlJP7f5Y

Irregular verbs are verbs that do not change forms in the regular or usual way.

What are the 4 types of irregular verbs?

Four categories of irregular verbs

• Irregular verbs with the same base form, past tense and past participle.

• Irregular verbs with the same base form and past participle.

• Irregular verbs with the same past tense and past participle.

• Irregular verbs with a different base form, past tense and past participle.

That is to say, the past tense of irregular verbs is not formed by adding -d or -ed

Identifying the simple past tense of irregular verbs

Irregular verbs

Regular verbs are verbs that, when conjugated in the simple past tense, we add a 'd' or an 'ed' to their endings. With irregular verbs, they take a completely different forms, by changing some letters from the original forms.

Examples: Know-knew

Grow-grew

Be-was

Have-had

Leave-left

Think-thought

Teach-taught

There are just so many irregular verbs in the English vocabulary as one can think of. As a student, you only need to master them and understand the conjugation rules.

Irregular past tense verbs are verbs that are formed in a way that doesn't fit the -ed pattern

Irregular past tense verbs and understanding the rules

she eats/she ate, you are/you were

-ed doesn't always apply to irregular verbs in the past tense.

Let's learn about irregular past tense verbs

Irregular Past Tense Verbs

In English, there are two main types of past tense verbs.

✅ Regular Past Tense Verbs - All we need to do is add ED to the end of the word. (Kicked, picked, jumped, pumped)

✅ Irregular Past Tense Verbs - are words that change in the past tense, but sometimes they stay the same.

For example:

Sit - sat

Know - knew

Feel - felt

See - saw

Conclusion

It's always a good idea to practice using past tense verbs, then you can learn which verbs are regular or irregular, practice makes perfect! 🎖️

Regular Past Tense

In English, most verbs are the action that is going on in a sentence. Most regular verbs are turned into the past tense, showing the action is finished, by adding '-ed' to the end of a base form of the verb. Let's look at an example with 'to jump' ('jump' is the base form of 'to jump'):

• I jump. (present tense)

• I jumped. (past tense)

Irregular past tense verbs are verbs that are formed in a different way that does not fit the '-ed' pattern. Some are easier than others:

• She eats. (present tense)

• She ate. (past tense)

Sometimes irregular past tense verbs are very difficult. Even after teaching the difference of 'lie' and 'lay', many times teachers still have to look up the correct irregular past tense before writing it!

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Irregular Past Tense Verbs

Let's take the verb 'to be' for example. In the present, past, present plural, and past plural, 'to be' is formed as follows: