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Although the concept of ‘irregular sentences’ does not formally correspond to any structure of the English language, this name is known to the Sentences that have an irregular verb as a verbal nucleus.
This distinction, which can be extrapolated to many other languages, is what differentiates verbs that follow general conjugation rules from those that have particular conjugations.
Regular and irregular verbs
There is no specific characteristic that allows to recognize and distinguish a priori a regular verb from an irregular one. In general, the longest verbs tend to be regular, which means in the English language that its conjugation for the past tense ─both for the past simple and for the past participle─ will end in 'd' in the case that the verb ends in the letter 'e' and in 'ed' in the case that the verb ends in any other letter.
For the irregular, As stated above, the criteria are not uniform and in each case the conjugation in the past tense may be different.
For example, the conjugation of the verb 'to go' in simple past is 'went': as you can see, not even a single letter remains in this past tense, but the past participle is 'gone', which preserves at least the stem.
Instead, the verb ‘to make’ becomes ‘made’ in both cases, preserving the grammatical root. As noted, in irregular verbs the conjugation for the past simple may differ from that of the past participle.
See also:
- Examples of regular verbs in English
- Examples of irregular verbs in English
Some schemes
In any case, despite the impossibility of completely generalizing the conjugation of irregular verbs, there are some that follow a similar conjugation scheme.
For example, there is a set of irregular verbs that are conjugated, for their two past tense forms, with the ending ‘-ought’. These are 'to think', 'to buy' (buy), 'to bring' (bring), 'to fight' (fight), 'to seek' (search).
Two particular cases of irregular verbs are the verbs that simultaneously fulfill the function of concept of action and of helping: the verb 'have' (which in the two conjugations of the past tense is 'had') and the verb 'is / are' (which in the past simple will be 'was / were' and in the past participle 'been') are the best examples of that.
If in the present continuous tense the verbs are conjugated with ‘is / are + verb with‘ ing ’, in the past continuous the conjugation will instead be‘ was / were + verb with ‘ing’. Also, if the present perfect is conjugated with 'have + participle', then the past perfect will be conjugated with 'had + participle'. In this context, there may eventually be duplication 'had had'.
- I have been thinking about this for two months.
- We ate in the bus, it was very funny.
- They drank all the night.
- I sent you an e-mail, did you see it?
- I have was too young when he began his career.
- I took the bus and went to the cinema.
- Brazil won five world cups, it’s incredible!
- I haven’t gone to church since your wedding.
- We swam in the gym of your school.
- I read four books during my holidays.
- I spoke in Harvard, I won’t be scare here.
- I saw your mother in the bus, was she?
- She went to the cinema last night.
- I told him all about his wife.
- Have you ever sat to see the sky?
- He has never paid a ticket in the cinema.
- We ate a lot in the party.
- I haven’t slept good since we watched that movie.
- You chose this situation when you got in love.
- Apparently, this woman wrote that novel when she was sixteen years old.
Andrea is a language teacher, and on her Instagram account she offers private lessons by video call so that you can learn to speak English.
