Regular vs. Irregular Verbs

Verbs come in many sizes, shapes, and colors. Today we’re talking about the “regular” and “irregular” varieties. Regular verbs form the past tense by adding the standard “ed”. But those “irregular” guys are the troublemakers — especially for people learning English as a second language. A couple of examples: go, went, has gone (present, past, participle); do, did, has done; and swim, swam, has swum. And there’s no way except memorization to learn the darned things.

Almost every other language uses a simple past tense for all verbs. Be envious! In some Native American languages, the speaker uses a standard verb and points either ahead or over the shoulder to indicate future and past tense. Cool!

Not so with U.S. language. (Why make it easy?) Teachers cause most of the student wailing by assigning a list of “irregulars” to be memorized. And that list is long: more than 200, to be more factual. Look them up on the Web and see how many you know.