Be able to speak English irregular verb. Forms of verbs in English. Examples of the use of irregular verbs

The verb is the king of the English language. Even the shortest sentence always contains a verb. Conversely, a verb can be used to form a sentence in one word, for example “ Stop!”(“ Stop! ”).

Verbs are sometimes called "action words." This is partly true. Many verbs convey the idea of doing something - for example, “ run"(To run)," fight"(To fight)," do" (make), " work" (work).

But some verbs have the meaning not of action, but of existence, not of “doing”, but of “being”. These are verbs such as “ be" (to be), " exist" (exist), " seem"(To seem)," belong”(To belong).

The subject is attached to the verb as a predicate. So, in the sentence “ Mary speaks English”(“ Mary speaks English ”) Mary- subject, and the verb speaks - predicate.

Thus, we can say that verbs are words that explain what the subject does ( does) or what / what is ( is), and describe:

action (" John plays football”-“ John plays football ”);
condition (" Ashley seems kind”-“ Ashley seems kind ”).

English verbs have one peculiarity. Most of the words of the other parts of speech -, etc. - do not change (although nouns have singular and plural forms). But almost all verbs change in grammatical forms. For example, the verb “ to work”(“ To work ”) five forms:

to work, work, works, worked, working

Note, however, that this is a little compared to languages in which one verb can have 30 or more forms (for example, Hungarian) - if you started learning verbs in, you can breathe a sigh of relief.

100 main verbs in English

Below is a list of 100 basic English verbs. it will be useful to first of all learn exactly these most popular verbs of the English language. The verbs in the table are given in descending order of frequency of use:

Basic verb form	Past tense verb (Simple Past)	Past participle (Past Participle)

have (to have)
do (to do)
say (to speak)

get (get)
make (to do)
know (to know)
think (to think)
take (to take)
see
come
want (want)
use
find
give
tell (to tell)
work
call (call; call)
try
ask (to ask; to ask)
need (to need)
feel (to feel)
become (to become)
leave
put (put; put)
mean (to mean)
keep (store)
let (allow)
begin (to begin)
seem (to seem)
help
show
hear
play (to play)
run
move

believe
bring
happen
write (write)
sit (to sit)
stand (to stand)
lose (to lose)
pay (to pay)
meet
include
continue
set
learn	learnt / learned	learnt / learned
change
lead
understand
watch
follow
stop
create
speak (to speak)

spend
grow
open

win
teach
offer (to offer)
remember

appear
buy
serve (serve)
die (to die)
send
build
stay (to stay)
fall (to fall)
cut
reach
kill
raise
pass
sell (sell)

Today we are going to talk about regular and irregular verbs - which have spoiled a lot of blood for English learners. You will not find a list of irregular verbs here (although there are links to such lists at the end of the article), but you will find answers to other questions: what are irregular verbs and why are they needed? How many are there? Should they be taught (spoiler: should) and how? And even if by the end of the article you do not like irregular verbs, then you will know much more about them.

Before plunging headlong into the world of irregular verbs, let's look around - and what happens in other languages. Irregular verbs are not inventions of the English language at all. Verbs that change and don't follow simple rules — which is exactly what makes a verb wrong — exist in many languages. In Italian and French, in Spanish and German. By the way, in German, verbs are divided not into regular and irregular, but into weak and strong - a different attitude is immediately felt.

There are irregular verbs in Russian as well. Here's an example: verbs ending in -at - read and play - are regular verbs. It is enough to know a couple of simple rules to get other forms: read, play, read, play, read, play - and so on. But, for example, to draw is also a verb in -at, but it forms completely different forms: I draw, draw. Why exactly, why not draw, do you draw? Or give: give, give. Why don't I give, give? Well, why - you say - because they don't say that. But a foreigner does not know how they speak and how not. He will have to learn all these forms. If you look at the tables of irregular verbs in the Russian language textbook, there are four times more irregular verbs than regular ones. So it's still not that bad in English.

So, back to the English language. What are these irregular verbs?
Let's start from the stove - what forms can a verb take in English? A verb in English can be in one of five forms:

Infinitive, infinitive. In Russian, this is called the indefinite form of the verb. In this form, the verb will meet you in the dictionary. She, like Stirlitz by parachute, is easy to recognize by the particle to, standing in front of the verb: to start, to drive(start, drive)
Simple present, form of the present tense. Looks the same as the infinitive, only without the to: start, drive... In the 3rd person singular, the verb looks different, at the end -s: starts, drives is added to it. We talked about this when we studied Present Simple
Simple Past, past tense form. In this form, the verb is used when we talk about the past: started, drove
Past Participle, past participle: started, driven
Present Participle Formed by adding -ing: starting, driving

All these five forms are used for the formation of certain times. In the Soviet school, they were all numbered - the infinitive was the zero form, then the first, second, third followed, and all ended in the fourth, -ing form of the verb. It seems to me that numbering the verb forms is a great idea. But in English grammar, verb forms are not numbered, so if you tell your interlocutor about the "second form of the verb", be prepared to stumble upon a wall of misunderstanding.

And now the most important thing: look at how the verbs changed in the Simple Past and Past Participle forms (or in the second and third forms, as schoolbooks bequeathed). One of the verbs simply added -ed, and the second behaved unpredictably - it changed the vowel at the root, then added a consonant at the end. This is exactly what the difference between regular and irregular verbs looks like. Correct ones will add -ed and that's it, the wrong ones will not obey any rules.

Now let's take a closer look at these changes; and start with regular verbs. I already said that regular verbs add -ed and it seems like this is where the complexity ends. This is almost true - but there are still some nuances. I must say right away - if you are just getting to know what irregular and regular verbs are - feel free to skip this part and go straight to irregular verbs.

So, returning to the regular verbs: the rules by which regular verbs change are confusing, and rarely come in handy in real life - after reading enough books, you yourself will feel how to correctly form the past tense, and you can safely skip the rules and move on to the next part.

Are you still reading? Still wondering how regular verbs change? Okay, but I warned you - these rules are not for the faint of heart. So, let's go (in brackets - translation of the indefinite form, so that you are not distracted by looking into the dictionary. Now we are not talking about meanings, but about the formation of verb forms):

regular regular verbs. Add -ed. Ready. want - wanted(to want), look - looked(watch)
the verb already ends in e. In this case, you don't need to add another e, just add -d. like - liked(like), move - moved(move)
the verb ends with a consonant followed by a y. In this case, y changes to i, and -ed is added to it: study - studied(study), carry - carried(carry)
but if the verb ends in a vowel followed by a y, then no replacement occurs: stay - stayed(stay), play - played(play)
The most interesting. If a verb consists of one syllable ends in a consonant-vowel-consonant, then the last consonant is doubled. It sounds intimidating, but the examples are not so bad: plan - planned(to plan), drop - dropped(drop). However, this does not work correctly if the last letter is x, y or w: mix - mixed(to mix), bow - bowed(bow)
Did you all think that? But no. Now the situation is the same: the verb ends in a consonant-vowel-consonant, but there are several syllables in it. The last consonant is doubled if the last syllable is stressed. prefer - preferred(prefer). And it does not double if the last syllable is unstressed: listen - listened(listen)
You thought, well, now for sure everything? Well, what is this rule without exceptions? In British English words traveled(to travel) and canceled(cancel) are written with a double vowel, although according to the rules they should not. There is no doubling in the American version of English.

Ufff, now that's it. The last three points, of course, are more like mockery than rules - and the syllables need to be counted, and to determine where are the vowels, where are the consonants, where are stressed, where are unstressed ... At some point it seems that with such rules, it’s better without them. And, frankly, it is possible without them - I learned about the existence of all these rules only when I was writing this article - and for the previous decades, as the hero of Moliere, he doubled or did not double the consonants at all without thinking about the grammatical science behind it. However, enough about regular verbs, now let's see how irregular verbs change.

How irregular verbs change

Since the verbs are irregular, then complete chaos will reign in their forms. So, yes, not quite so. Even among all these non-standard forms, certain patterns can be traced. Let's see what are the options for changing irregular verbs - having learned these patterns, it will be easier for you to learn the forms of irregular verbs. I apologize in advance for the use of the Soviet system with numbering - but in this case, it is, indeed, clearer.

The second and third forms are the same

In almost half of irregular verbs, the past tense form and the past participle (i.e. the second and third forms) coincide. have - had - had(have), keep - kept - kept(keep), leave - left - left(leave), say - said - said(talk). It's not just irregular verbs, but some kind of waltz ...

The first and third forms are the same

In these irregular verbs, the past tense looks out of the box, and the participle looks the same as the original verb form. Those. the first and third forms coincide. There are few such verbs - I counted only three: come - came - come(to come), become - became - become(become), run - ran - run(run away).

All shapes are the same

The next group of verbs decided not to bother at all and use one form wherever possible. Often (but not always) these are single-syllable verbs ending in a consonant, for example: cut - cut - cut(cut), put - put - put(put), shut - shut - shut(close).
Be careful with the verb to read(read): it might seem like it doesn't change ( read - read - read), but this is not entirely true, the pronunciation changes in the second and third forms, so this verb rather belongs to the group "2 = 3".

Nothing matches

Well, all the other verbs - in them all forms are different. Where there are no rules, there are no rules: begin - began - begun(start off), do - did - done(make), eat - ate - eaten(there is), see - saw - seen(see) and so on.

How many irregular verbs there are and do you need to know them all

Now let's assess the scale of the problem. How many irregular verbs are there in total? And, coming from a more practical side - do you need to know all of them. Let's figure it out.

The most complete list of irregular verbs that I could find on the Internet consists of 638 verbs. It looks like this is really the most comprehensive list. But every verb on this list is some kind of dinosaur, for example, blin - blan - blun(this is not a joke, this is really one of the verbs on the list). What the hell are these words - I myself, I confess, I do not know. I have never met such words in all the years of using the English language.

I think you have already guessed that such a list hardly represents values for an ordinary person. No, 600+ irregular verbs are definitely not necessary to learn.

How much do you need?

Trying to answer this question, but went the way that is familiar to me from another job - as an analyst. I found a list of the 5000 most common English words, sorted by popularity; 1000 of them turned out to be verbs; in addition, I downloaded a list of irregular verbs - and compared the two lists with each other. What can you see? There are many more irregular verbs among frequently used verbs than among rare ones. If, for example, in the top 100 English verbs every second is irregular, in the next hundred it is already every fifth. And among the remaining 800, only one in ten is wrong on average.

That is, it turns out if your vocabulary consists of 5000 words (and this is a confident upper-intermediate level, if not "fluent", then certainly "confident" proficiency in the language), about 1000 of them will be verbs, and about 140-150 of these verbs will be irregular. It is this number that you need to focus on - unless, of course, you are at the Upper-Intermediate level,. This is exactly how many (or maybe a little more - up to 200) words you will find in most lists of irregular verbs scattered across the Internet.

Do I need to learn irregular verbs

Even if you aim only at the most popular 140 verbs, the scope of work opens up rather big - after all, for each verb you need to know not only the basic form, but also the second and third forms - and now, in total, several hundred new words have come up. Are these irregular verbs so important, can you do your best for the better? Will they really not understand me without all these grammatical problems?

All right, they will understand. But you can hardly give the impression of a person with whom you can have a meaningful conversation. Remember examples of irregular verbs from the Russian language that I gave at the beginning of our conversation? What would you think of a person who says "I draw", "I give", together "I draw", "I give"? Yes, you can praise your efforts, but it will be difficult to take such an interlocutor seriously. Your speech will look the same in English if you start ignoring irregular verbs. In short, if you have at least a little bit serious plans to use the English language, you cannot do without irregular verbs.

How to learn irregular verbs

Are there any faster and more reliable ways to learn irregular verbs? I don’t think there is one recipe that will guarantee success, but I have collected a few tips that may help. Some of them, perhaps, contradicting each other, because, again, there is no universal system - try each one and use those that suit you.

Teach by groups

We have already seen above that entire groups of irregular verbs change at once according to similar patterns. Use this - learn a group of irregular verbs at once. Often this helps to save energy - instead of remembering all the forms, you, for example, remember that this one does not change at all, or that the second and third forms are the same. And the right answer will come to mind.

Learn by frequency

Perhaps you should not learn the irregular forms of those verbs that you do not know. 140-150 irregular verbs are B2 level, but what if you are only in B1 or A2? You do not need to run in front of the locomotive, in this case it is enough to know only those verbs that correspond to your level. However, remember to come back regularly and learn new verbs as you progress.

There are several lists on the Internet, organized by frequency, but they all seemed inconvenient to me, so I made my own - the link at the end of the article.

Use programs / apps / games

Nobody canceled the technical progress and the conveniences that it brings with it. There are a myriad of applications, websites, programs, games to help you learn irregular verbs. In my humble experience, not all of them can be of real benefit, but this does not mean at all that they should not be used at all. Look for them on Google and Yandex, install applications on phones and tablets. Even if the application turns out to be complete nonsense, there is a chance that trying to figure out how it works, you will learn five or two verbs - already a benefit.

Learn all new verbs at once with three forms

From this moment, if you met a new verb in the lesson, in a book, in a conversation - and you open the dictionary to find out the meaning of this new verb (in the event that it makes sense, see "") - look at the same time at the correct whether he is or not; if wrong, how it changes. This will give you a chance to learn the new word and the forms it takes.

Build sentences

Learning irregular verbs like a rhyme is an old, proven, but not the most effective way. Maybe you, like me, are not particularly talented in memorizing poetry, the right line will fall out of my head at the most inopportune moment. Instead, treat the new forms as new words - build with a sentence with the second and third forms of the verb, come up with associations and stories, draw pictures - in short, do everything that we talked about in the article "".

Pay attention to irregular verbs when reading or listening

Now that you know about the existence of irregular verbs, pay attention to them in the texts you read, in the films you watch, in the speech you hear. The first time, just take a split second to realize: just now you have heard one of the forms of an irregular verb, you remember its meaning and all the other forms. Of course, you don't have to spend too much effort on this - especially if as a result you forget what the interlocutor was talking about. But after you meet the verb several times in a real situation and pay attention to it, it is unlikely that it will be forgotten in the foreseeable future.

How to determine the forms of a verb using a dictionary

And the last thing. How do regular and irregular verbs look in English dictionaries? Interestingly, there will be no direct indication, such as such and such a verb, correct or incorrect in the dictionary. Apparently, because the border between regular and irregular verbs is not very clear. There are, for example, verbs that behave as irregular in American English and as correct in British.

In addition, each dictionary has its own characteristics - for example, in the Oxford Online Dictionary, they do not look at all; it is assumed that you already know how irregular and regular verbs change. Another example is the learnersdictionary.com online dictionary (which I highly recommend if you don't already use it). If you open the definition of a verb, all its existing forms will be listed right before the definition - starting with the -s form and ending with the -ing form. Between them - one or two, depending on whether they are the same or different - there will be either -ed form, or forms for the past tense and for the past participle. Therefore, feel free to look into this dictionary if you want to know for sure how to do it correctly.

This is where the story about regular and irregular verbs ends - and move on to what all these torments were for - to the tenses of the verb. We will talk about this in future articles.

Additional materials:

The consonant doubling rule for regular verbs

The most complete list of irregular verbs (638 items)
https://pasttenses.com/irregular-verbs-list

More vital list of irregular verbs (139)
https://www.gingersoftware.com/content/grammar-rules/verbs/list-of-irregular-verbs/

List of irregular verbs sorted by frequency and level

past tense and participle II not as a general rule, such verbs are called wrong or irregular (irregular verbs).

Irregular verbs in modern English are derived from verbs that followed the correct structure at earlier stages of the language's development. In particular, many of these verbs are derived from the Germanic strong verbs, which create many inflectional forms using ablaut. This phenomenon can still be observed in English today using the example of the verb sing / sang / sung.

Most English irregular verbs are native words derived from existing Old English verbs. Almost all verbs that were borrowed in later periods were correctly conjugated. There are a few exceptions, such as the "catch" verb, derived from Old French cachier, the forms of which were formed by analogy with the native verb teach.

Most irregular verbs exist as remnants of the past, as a prototype of the historically established conjugation system. When some grammatical rules began to change or even withdrawn from use, some verbs retained their old forms. For example, before the great vowel shift, the verb keep(formerly pronounced as kehp) belonged to the group of verbs whose vowels were shortened in the past tense. This pattern persists today with the same verb. kept(just like the verbs crept, wept, leapt, left). Verbs such as peep which have a similar form but arose after the great vowel shift take the ending -ed.

New verbs, including borrowings from other languages, as well as nouns that began to be used as verbs, for example "to facebook", - are subject to correct change until they become an integral part of an already existing irregular verb, for example "to housesit"(from sit) → housesat .

Today, there is a tendency towards a decrease in the number of irregular verbs, because most of them take the form of regular verbs, undergoing standard conjugation (for example, the verb chide once-past tense chid, later acquired the correct form childed). Many verbs have dual forms, both of which exist in parallel: spelt / spelled, dreamt / dreamed.

In some dialects of the English language, irregular forms of verbs (obsolete forms) may be used, which in the generally accepted version of English are conjugated according to the general rule.

Below is the list of irregular verbs, this list does not include easily recognizable derivative verbs (formed using prefixes from basic irregular verbs), for example: go → forego, outgo, with the exception of those having peculiarities in shaping and / or differences in use.

Every schoolboy, student, student, and even a specialist in the field of English is familiar with the problem of using verb forms.

Let's deal with the following concepts:

why do we need three forms of the verb in English,
which forms of the verb are regular (regular) and which are irregular (irregular).

English verb forms

The English verb has three forms. For convenience in writing, the first, second and third forms are designated by Roman numerals I, II, III.

Ithe form (or infinitive withoutto ) for example: to make - make is the first form (basic, basic form)

With the help of the first form of the verb, the Simple present is formed. When forming this tense, the I form of the verb is used without change, except with the pronouns of the 3rd person singular - the ending - s or - es (he, she, it - he jumpes, she jumpes, it jumpes) is added to the verb in the I form. There may be other exceptions as well, but you should familiarize yourself with them privately in more detail, studying the education of the Present Simple Tense.

IIthe form serves to form the Simple past tense. To form this tense, you need to use both regular and irregular verbs. In this case, regular verbs have the ending - ed, and irregular ones are used from the second column of the table of irregular verbs

Jump - jumped

IIIthe form is a special lexical and grammatical unit - Participle II (Participle II). For regular verbs, the III form coincides with the II - th, and such a verb has a corresponding ending - ed.

Jump (I) - jumped (II) - jumped (III)

The II and III forms of irregular verbs can be formed in various ways, as indicated below.

Regular (regular) verbs

Regular (regular) verbs are formed by adding the ending to the verb stem - ed... For example, finish + ed = finish ed.

However, this statement requires clarification.

NB! To determine the correct ending for verbs based on a stressed vowel and a consonant sound, you need not only add the ending - ed, but also double the consonant at the end of the word in II and III forms: slip - slipped - slipped.

NB! To determine the correct ending for verbs based on a consonant letter or letter y, you need to change y to i and add the ending - ed. > try - tried - tried.

→ BUT! There is an exception to this case: if there is a vowel before the vowel y, then y is preserved: play - played - played

To determine the correct ending for verbs with a vowel stem e, you need to add only e instead of the ending - ed>: skate - skated - skated.

Irregular (irregular) verbs

The question of such verbs is always essential for all English learners.

Irregular verbs are verbs that change their form not according to general rules, but using special forms.

It so happened historically that the forms of verbs began to change due to their most frequent use. Therefore, in modern English there are a lot of verbs that have II and III forms.

Irregular verbs are involved in the formation, first of all, of three past tenses - Past simple, Present perfect, Past perfect tenses, as well as a passive voice.

When these forms are formed, there is no clearly structured algorithm; they are mastered mainly by memorization. However, there are some typical methods of education that are phonetic in nature.

Below are examples of the distribution of verbs into type groups

Availability inI final consonantdand inIIand inIIIforms - finished consonantt. In this case, the vowel at the root can be preserved.

Changing the vowel at the root of the word inIIform and preservation (change) of the vowel in the root with the addition of the ending -e (n):

Same spelling and pronunciation of verbs inIIand inIIIforms

came come to come

Spelling and pronunciationIIandIIIforms differ only in root main. InIIform - vowel a, inIII- vowelu.

I	II	III	Translation
drink	drank	drunk	drink

Today there is no universal table of all English verbs. All kinds of them are freely available in reference books, grammar reference books, as well as on Internet resources.

The forms of verbs in English differ from Russian. These parts of speech do not have such a developed system of endings, but they change in other ways.

Basic forms of verbs

There are three main forms characteristic of this part of speech in English:

infinitive or first: to dance, to swim, to play;
the second corresponds to the past simple tense Past Simple: danced (danced), swam (swam), played (played);
third- past participle Past Participle: danced (danced), swum (swam), played (played).

These forms serve to form different tenses and other grammatical phenomena.

Regular verbs

This group includes words that form past tense forms by adding the ending -ed to the full stem. The second and third forms of these verbs are no different. It is important to know the rules for joining the ending:

if the verb ends in the vowel -e, it is removed:

to hope - hoped
the letter -y at the end of the word is replaced by -i when adding the ending -ed when there is a consonant in front of it:

to copy - copied;
the vowel -y remains unchanged if it is preceded by another vowel:

to stay - stayed;
the final consonant is doubled when it is preceded by a stressed syllable with a short vowel:

to stop - stopped;
the consonant -l at the end of a word is doubled regardless of whether the previous syllable is stressed:

to travel - traveled

According to US grammar, in regular verbs, the letter -l before the ending -ed is doubled only if there is an emphasis on the last syllable, in other cases it stands alone: to compel - compelled (force - forced). But: to travel - traveled (the stress falls on the first syllable).

Irregular Verbs

This group is not as numerous as the first. For this reason, there are many pivot tables where the initial, second and third forms of irregular verbs are indicated. Their difference from the correct ones is that the base is modified or remains the same in the past tense.

It is possible to single out the main words most commonly used in the 4th and 5th grade textbooks that make up this group in the table of verb forms in English that do not form the past tense according to the rule.

*The first form*	*Translation*	*Past Simple*	*Past Participle (past participle)*
be	to be	was / were	been
buy	buy	bought	bought
catch	catch	caught	caught
come	to come	came	come
do	make	did	done
draw	paint	drew	drawn
drink	drink	drank	drunk
eat	there is	ate	eaten
fall	fall	fell	fallen
feed	feed	fed	fed
fly	fly	flew	flown
get	receive	got	got
go	go	went	gone
have	have	had	had
lose	lose	lost	lost
make	make	made	made
read	read	read	read
ride	ride	rode	ridden
run	run	ran	run
see	see	saw	seen
sing	sing	sang	sung
sit	sit	sat	sat
swim	swim	swam	swum
write	write	wrote	written

Examples of sentences with regular and irregular verbs

To understand how English verbs are used in the past tense, you need to look at sentences that are different in purpose. Past Simple requires a second form:

Regular verb to travel:

We traveled to China last summer. - We went to China last summer.

We didn’t travel to China last summer. - We didn't go to China last summer.

Did you travel to China last summer? - Did you go to China last summer?

From the examples given, it can be seen that the semantic verb is in the past tense only in an affirmative sentence. The same happens with irregular verbs. In the negative and interrogative, the auxiliary word did appears, which takes over the second form. The exception is to be (to be) and modal verbs - they do not have helpers.

I was in the gallery. - I was in the gallery.

I wasn’t in the gallery. - I have not been to the gallery.

Were you in the gallery? - Have you been to the gallery?

I could swim when I was 5. - I could swim when I was 5 years old.

I couldn’t swim. - I could not swim.

Could you swim? - Did you know how to swim?

Irregular verb to draw:

He drew a portrait of his mother yesterday.

He didn’t draw a portrait of his mother yesterday.

Did he draw a portrait of his mother yesterday?

In grammatical tenses, Perfect groups use the third form. Moreover, the past participle is in all sentences:

She has just got a present. - She just got a present.

She hasn’t got a present yet. “She hasn't received her present yet.

Has she got any presents? - Has she received gifts yet?

What have we learned?

Verbs in English have three basic forms: initial, past simple tense, and past participle. According to the method of formation of the last two, verbs are divided into regular and irregular.