Selasa, 15 Juli 2008

Regular and Irregular Verbs

Regular Verbs

English regular verbs change their form very little . 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.

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