Introduction to irregular verbs | The parts of speech | Grammar

- Hello grammarians.

Today I want to start talking
about irregular verbs.

That is to say verbs
that are a little weird.

You know, we have this
idea of a regular verb

that we can conjugate in all tenses

and it's just going to behave
in a way that we expect.

Like for example the verb talk.

So if we take a regular verb

and we put it in the past,
the present, and the future,

this is what it's going to look like.

Present tense,

talk.

Future tense,

will talk.

Past tense,

talked, with that e-d ending.

But there are plenty of verbs in English,

as you have no doubt discovered,

that don't follow that basic rule.

Present tense is one form of the verb,

then the past tense is the
present with e-d tacked onto it,

and then the future with
will tacked onto the front.

And there are plenty of words in English,

as you have no doubt discovered,

that don't behave that way at all.

So let's take another --

let's take an irregular word

like run.

Present tense,

run.

Future tense,

will run.

Past tense,

ran.

Oh weird.

Super duper weird.

Now there are a lot of
irregular verbs in English,

but you're listening to someone

with a grammar book the size of a car.

So I think between the two of us

we can figure this out together.

But for now,

let's just focus on four verbs.

To be, to have, to do, and to say.

So let's take these verbs

and make them work for a
bunch of different people

in different times.

So in the first person,

when we're talking about ourselves,

when I'm talking about myself.

In the present I would say I am.

I have.

I do.

I say.

If we're talking about someone else,

in the present in the singular,

we would say she is,

she has,

she does,

and she says.

So the third person singular is different

in the way that these
words are pronounced.

So am because of this
entirely different word is,

have doesn't become haves,

it's has,

and do doesn't become does,

it becomes does,

we actually change the vowel sound here,

just like say doesn't become says,

we don't say she says in
standard American English,

we say she says.

In the present tense,

we are, we have, we do, we say.

And in the past tense in the first person,

these four verbs form the following:

I was,

I had,

I did,

and I said.

And in the plural past it was

we were,

we had,

we did,

and we said.

These four verbs are some of
the strangest ones in English,

but they're the most important.

In another video,

I'm going to go through
some broad rules that govern

the rest of the irregular
verbs in English.

You can learn anything.

David, out!