IRREGULAR VERBS

How can I decide if a verb in English is irregular? If I meet a verb that I’ve never seen before I do not find any guide about this in the verb itself. For example the verb ‘to forget’. What is there in this word to indicate that it is regular or irregular?  Very little.

We may guess that as it ends in ‘get’ (but without a similar meaning) it can be the same as ‘to get’, and we know that ‘to get’ is an irregular verb. Its past tense and past participle are ‘got’. In the USA and Canada its past participle is ‘gotten’. So you could guess that ‘forget’ in the present changes to ‘forgot’ in the past tense – and you would be correct.

This is the process that an English-speaking child uses – how does the new verb SOUND in the past tense? This is not a bad test because there must be a historical reason why English adopted the past tense in this ‘double’ manner.

The main test, I imagine, was – how does this verb sound in its past tense form? Is it easy to pronounce?

The English language nearly always chooses the form of the word

that is easiest T O SAY.

An English-speaking child meets this problem at an early age, around three or four, I think. Imagine a little girl with her first toy. She throws it and breaks it into pieces. She needs to tell her mother what has happened. She knows the verb ‘to break’ so she goes to her mother and says, ‘I breaked my toy’ because that is the most logical option, to treat it as a REGULAR verb.

But she is wrong – ‘to break’ is IRREGULAR and if she is lucky her mother will correct her and will say, ‘No – you broke your toy.’ Unless the mother is crazy she will not explain why it is correct to say ‘broke’ because it doesn’t matter why; not then, not now, not ever - it's just irregular.

Similarly, if a child receives some money he or she will go to the shop to buy some sweets. On returning home (and knowing the verb ‘to buy’) the child may say to another member of the family, ‘I buyed some sweets.’ Once again, this is the logical choice; to treat the verb as regular. But it is wrong.

If the child says this to an older brother or sister they will automatically correct the child saying, ‘No, you bought them at the shop.’ And the child will hear the word ‘bot’ (‘o’ of Tottenham) which is correct, because ‘to buy’ is an IRREGULAR verb. The child will not see ‘bought’ in its written form so its SOUND won’t cause confusion.

By the time the child starts school he or she will know the correct option for the past tense in hundreds of cases, and only needs to learn more by practice and tests.

When the child learns to read and write the strange difference between how the word is WRITTEN and how it SOUNDS will not seem very important : the sound will always take priority and any failure to connect the sound and the written word will be seen as a spelling problem.

For millions of English-speaking people the  sound comes naturally and the written word may never be relevant because many people don’t write much and don’t need to write much.

For example, in England many native English speakers of the younger generation, including educated people, can speak the present perfect tense with an auxiliary in a natural, confident and correct way, using the contraction

“I would’ve told you.”  For “I would have told you.”

“You would ‘ve seen us.”  For “You would have seen us.”

But if you challenge them about what they are actually saying by asking them to write it, you find that they think they are saying

“I would of told you.”

‘You would of seen us.”

because the sound is the same. If you point out the error they will not be troubled – the spoken word is paramount.

Regular verbs end in –ed in the past tense and past participle.

For example:

Irregular verbs do not add –ed: they change in the past tense and past participle –

break/broke/broken

buy/bought

see/saw/seen

or they remain remain exactly the same in the past:

(this category is small)

hit/hit/hit; bet/bet/bet for example.

There are lists of irregular verbs in textbooks and on the internet; you must study these, remember them and practice using them.

The simple past tense really is simple: except for ‘to be’ which has two forms in the past (was or here) the past tense consists of ONE WORD for everybody.

So it doesn’t matter if you wish to say I, you, he, she, it, we, you or they –

there is only one word to remember and you find it in the lists of irregular verbs.

Please tell all your friends about PAGES IN ENGLISH

at ingles-gratis123.com