This is why these words can create havoc for conscientious speakers of English. Proper use of irregular verbs requires old-fashioned memorization-there are no secret formulas or shortcuts. "The ten commonest verbs in English ( be, have, do, say, make, go, take, come, see, and get) are all irregular," notes Steven Pinker, an American experimental psychologist and linguist, "and about 70% of the time we use a verb, it is an irregular verb." Pinker acknowledges 180 irregular English verbs, but there is an online Extended Irregular Verb Dictionary which contains over 470 irregular verbs, including rare ones such as bestrew, enwind, and hagride.
Take the verb hide as another example: He hid in the closet. It is the simple past tense and past participle of an irregular verb that has no usual pattern to follow. There are far fewer irregular verbs than regular ones, but we use them all the time. Regular verbs follow typical conjugation patterns (like dance/danced/danced ), whereas irregular verbs do not (like drive/drove/driven ). But the simple past form, if it differs from the participle, cannot function as an adjective: a broke dish is substandard English. The past participle of an irregular verb can also function as an adjective: a broken dish. Be careful never to add a helping verb to the simple past form of an irregular verb- I have broke your dish is an embarrassing confession in more ways than one. The compound verb have broken is so called because we've added a helping verb ( have) to the main verb's past participle ( broken). We use the past participle, broken, to form compound verbs in sentences like I have broken your dish. The simple past tense is broke, which we use in sentences like I broke your dish. Let's get back to the irregular verb break. Irregular verbs are verbs that form their simple past and past participles in some way other than by adding the suffix -ed (e.g., sat). And then there are a few really weird ones, like go: its past participle ( gone) is recognizable enough, but its simple past tense is a strange new word ( went). Regular verbs are verbs whose simple past and past participle are formed by adding the suffix -ed (e.g., walked). If the word already ends in an e then you just need to add a -d.
Still others, like break and sing, change to form the past tense ( broke, sang) and change again to form the past participle ( broken, sung). When verbs are written in the past tense they often end in -ed. Others, like feel and teach, become modified versions of themselves ( felt, taught) to form both the past tense and the past participle. Some irregular verbs, like let, shut, and spread, never change, whether present or past. They form the simple past tense and the past participle in any number of unpredictable ways. A regular verb's simple past tense and past participle are always identical. We call a verb regular when we add ed ( want ed, look ed) or sometimes just d ( create d, love d) to form what are called the simple past tense and the past participle (see third and fourth paragraphs below). English verbs are either regular or irregular.
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