Regular and Irregular verbs....

 

English Verbs...

Verbs constitute one of the main word classes in the English language. Like other types of words in the language, English verbs are not strongly inflected – generally the only inflected forms are a third-person singular simple present in -s, a simple past form, a past participle, and a present participle and gerund form in -ing. Most verbs inflect in a simple regular fashion, although there are a few hundred irregular verbs, mostly with irregular simple past and past participle forms. The copula verb be has a larger number of different inflected forms, and is highly irregular.

Regular Verbs

English regular verbs change their form very little (unlike irregular verbs). The past tense and past participle of regular verbs end in -ed, for example:

work, worked, worked

But you should note the following points:

1. Some verbs can be both regular and irregular, for example:

learn, learned, learned
learn, learnt, learnt

2. Some verbs change their meaning depending on whether they are regular or irregular, for example "to hang":

regular	hang, hanged, hanged	to kill or die, by dropping with a rope around the neck
irregular	hang, hung, hung	to fix something (for example, a picture) at the top so that the lower part is free

3. The present tense of some regular verbs is the same as the past tense of some irregular verbs:

regular	found, founded, founded
irregular	find, found, found

 

 

Irregular Verbs

Irregular verbs are an important feature of English. We use irregular verbs a lot when speaking, less when writing. Of course, the most famous English verb of all, the verb "to be", is irregular.

What is the difference between regular verbs and irregular verbs?

	Base Form	Past Simple	Past Participle
With regular verbs, the rule is simple...
The past simple and past participle always end in -ed:	finish	finished	finished
	stop	stopped	stopped
	work	worked	worked
But with irregular verbs, there is no rule...
Sometimes the verb changes completely:	sing	sang	sung
Sometimes there is "half" a change:	buy	bought	bought
Sometimes there is no change:	cut	cut	cut

One good way to learn irregular verbs is to try sorting them into groups, as above.

Some important......