The funky -ed irregular verb | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy

Hello, Garans.

We're talking about irregular verbs, that is to say, verbs that aren't formed like regular verbs. To give you a taste of what regular verbs look like, just as a refresher, let's take the word "walk."

Let's put it in the present tense. Now, normally, under normal circumstances, we'd want to just add an "ed" to it in order to form the simple past tense. So we go from "walk" to "walked." We add this "ed" ending, and it turns out that there are a lot of irregular verbs that also behave the same way when we make the past tense. We have this "d" sound; it's just that they're not represented that way in the spelling.

I'll give you an example. The present tense form of the word "to sleep" is "sleep," and when we put it in past tense, it is not "sleeped" but "slept." The "p" part of "slept" does the same work as the "ed" ending for the regular plural. So "sleep" becomes "slept," which is the same as "walk" becomes "walked."

Likewise, "keep" becomes "kept," "build" becomes "built," "spend" becomes "spent," "leave" becomes "left," "leap" becomes "leapt," and "lose" becomes "lost."

So, although these verbs are all irregular verbs, within their irregularity, at least in this case, there are some common distinctions. They're all still trying to make the same sound as "walked." It just displays differently. So it's not "sleeped" but "slept," not "keeped" but "kept," not "builded" but "built," not "spended" but "spent," not "leave" but "left," not "leaped" but "leapt," and not "losed" but "lost."

At least as it applies to Modern Standard English, and that, my friends, is the funky "ed." You can learn anything, Dave. Out.