Image courtesy of Pixabay, CCO

Sometimes you’ll hear someone use a verb in the past tense and it just sounds wrong.

“I knew it was late as soon as I had woken up.”

Woken doesn’t sound or even look like a real word. That’s because its source verb, wake, is an irregular verb. There are regular verbs and irregular verbs in English. Regular verbs are simple to transpose into the past tense. All you have to do is add “-ed” to the end of it. Pick – Picked, Cook – Cooked, Turn – Turned. If only all verbs were so easy!

Unfortunately, English has many verbs that don’t shift into past tense in a regular manner. The past tense of cut is cut. The past tense of do is did. These are irregular verbs, and even native speakers can get them wrong – regularly.

As you know, language evolves. Irregular verbs come to us from Old English, an outgrowth of Germanic language dating from around 500 to 1100 AD. Most of our irregular verbs use the Germanic form of conjugation known as ablaut. In this form of conjugation, the stem of the word changes to indicate the tense. There are some patterns if you can find them. Often, just changing a vowel in the stem verb would make the difference. Sing becomes sung, for example, and hold becomes held. In some cases, a double vowel is changed to a single. Meet becomes met, and shoot becomes shot.

Curiously, research has shown that the more often a verb is used, the more likely it would be to remain irregular¹ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/10/harvard-scientists-predict-the-future-of-the-past-tense/. Their usage is memorized at a young age, even from people learning English as a second language. They are properly used because they are heard so often. No one cares why have becomes had and eat becomes ate. That’s just the way it is. But changing the tense on verbs which aren’t used all that often, like display, is much easier to remember if we simply add “-ed” at the end: displayed.

However, the past participle of irregular verbs can alter further from the past tense. If lie in its past tense becomes lay, then the past participle becomes lain. “I will lie down.” “I decided to lay down.” “I have lain here long enough.” But, how often does anyone say “lain?” It looks weird.

Because we don’t use the past tense or past participle of some verbs often enough, those words can seem odd or wrong. This has resulted in some regular verbs altering back to irregular verbs. The accepted past tense form of sneak is sneaked. But, increasingly, you’ll hear people use the word snuck. It’s wrong, for one thing, because more than one vowel has been changed. But, that hasn’t prevented the word from creeping into our vocabulary.

Here are some verbs which are regularly conjugated incorrectly:

Dive is a regular verb, so its past tense is dived. This hasn’t prevented the word from morphing into the irregular past tense verb as dove.

Drive is an irregular verb. Its past tense is drove, and the past participle is driven. For some reason, you can often hear people use drove as the past participle.

Drink becomes drank in the past tense and drunk in the past participle. You’d be amazed how often people get that wrong.

Dream is a regular verb, so the past and past participle are dreamed. Dreamt is not acceptable in the US.

Burn, likewise is conjugated as a regular verb. Use burned, not burnt.

Learn becomes learned, not learnt.

Smell becomes smelled, not smelt.

Spell becomes spelled, not spelt.

Do you have trouble with irregular verbs? What real English words always look wrong to you? I’d love to hear from you.

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  https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/10/harvard-scientists-predict-the-future-of-the-past-tense/