Mar 8, 2012 / Language & Grammar

Highly Irregular

I’ve written a couple of posts about tricky irregular verbs such as lead and lie/lay. Today I ran across a recent post about irregular verbs at the Language Log blog that lists some of the more confusing verbs and their proper forms alongside verbs with similar present-tense forms whose past tense forms are created differently. I pulled this table straight out of the post.

 PLAIN PRES   PRETERITE   PAST PART. 
hit hit hit hit
sit sit sat sat
right right righted righted
light light lit lit
fight fight fought fought
lie lie lay lain
lay lay laid laid
get get got gotten (got in British English)
let let let let
make make made made
take take took taken
bring bring brought brought (brung in some non-standard dialects)
ping ping pinged pinged
sing sing sang sung

The “plain pres” column lists the present tense, the “preterite” lists basically the simple past tense, and the “past part” column lists the past participle, or the verb form you tend to use along with helping verbs like “had.” Note how the past tense forms of similar words like hit/sit, right/light/fight, get/let, and the other groupings differ. No wonder people have trouble keeping up with this stuff!

I found another relevant and interesting post here.

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      1. My mother tongue is Dutch, but I’m used to the irregular verbs now! I love English now I’m over the hard parts!
        The German irregular verbs are easier for me to learn, because they are more the same as in my language.

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  2. Reblogged this on Cheryl Andrews and commented:
    Very useful for some irregular verbs (present tense, past tense and past participle) I recommend checking out the “Language Log” blog as well.

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  9. Reblogged this on haiyotamie and commented:
    I am trying to manage my time of doing everyrhing i still can not handle them all reading this blog courage me and very interesting to follow thankyou so much to let me repost this

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  16. English is my second language.How difficult it was to learn about it and we were screaming this irregular ones in one class to memorize, we were like idiots but have to admit it worked:)

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