Verbos irregulares em inglês

Most of the English verbs are conjugated in various tenses and persons, according to regular patterns:

• Simple past and past participle: infinitive+ed:
  • • want wanted
  • Exceptions:
    • "y" from the end of the infinitive turns into "i" if preceded by a consonant:
      • bury buried but stay stayed
    • "p" from the end of the infinitive will double:
      • stop stopped
    • verbs ending in "e" in infinitive, only add "d":
      • love loved
• Present participle: infinitive+ing:
  • • want wanting
  • Exception: verbs ending in a vowel, preceded by a consonant, will have the last letter removed before adding "ing".
    • move moving but dye dyeing
• Present, 3rd person, singular: infinitive+s
  • • He calls me every day.
  • Exception: "y" from the end of the infinitive turns into "i" if preceded by a consonant and we add an "es" instead of "s":
    • She applies what she learns.

All the verbs that do not follow the rules above in the conjugation of one or more tenses are called irregular verbs. There are about 200 English irregular verbs, many of them very common.

Most of the irregular verbs conjugate without following the rules in simple past and past participle.

• There are irregular verbs that have the simple past identical with the past participle, both very different from the infinitive:
  • sell-sold-sold
• Some irregular verbs have the simple past and past participle identical with the infinitive:
  • bet-bet-bet
• They can change one or more letters within the root, in simple past and past participle:
  • sing-sang-sung
• Others drop a letter from the root in the conjugated forms for the two tenses and add or not a "t" at the end:
  • meet-met-met
  • feel-felt-felt
• Other irregular verbs modify the base form to conjugate in simple past and add an "n" to form the past participle:
  • drive-drove-driven
• The past participle can also result by adding an "n" to the simple past:
  • speak-spoke-spoken

Although there are many irregular verbs in English, learning a few for each type of variation will help a non-native speaker know how to conjugate most of them.