yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Introduction to irregular verbs | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Hello, Garans.

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."

Right? 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 "ed" ending. But there are plenty of verbs in English, as you have no doubt discovered, that don't follow that basic rule: present tense, this one form of the verb; and the past tense, the "ed" is just 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 this is an entirely different word; "have" doesn't become "haves," it's "has," and "do" doesn't become "dos," 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, Dave it out.

More Articles

View All
The Truth About Quitting My Job and Starting a Business...
Hey guys and welcome back to the channel! So, in this video, I wanted to go deep and discuss exactly how I was able to quit the rat race and start working for myself full time. I know a majority of people out there are aiming to achieve this; most people …
Khan Academy Welcomes Duck Duck Moose
Hi, I’m Sal Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, and I’m Caroline H. Flexer, founder of Duck Duck Moose. We have a very exciting announcement today. As you probably know, Khan Academy is a not-for-profit with a mission of a free, world-class education for …
Homeroom with Sal & Katy Knight - Tuesday, October 13
Hi everyone, Sal here from Khan Academy. Welcome to the Homeroom live stream! We had a little bit of a hiatus, but now we are back. I had a torn calf and other things, but I’m almost fully recuperated. But thanks for joining! We have a really exciting con…
How do you prepare yourself mentally to be an entrepreneur?
So how do you prepare yourself mentally to be an entrepreneur? What I will say is maybe borrowing a little bit from Buddhism or philosophical Hinduism, but it’s really this notion to try to not get attached to the outcome. Obviously, you’re going into en…
Weak acid–strong base reactions | Acids and bases | AP Chemistry | Khan Academy
Acetic acid is an example of a weak acid, and sodium hydroxide is an example of a strong base. When acetic acid reacts with sodium hydroxide, an aqueous solution of sodium acetate is formed along with water. Since this reaction is an acid-base neutralizat…
8 STOIC TIPS FOR SOLVING PROBLEMS WITH PEOPLE | STOICISM INSIGHTS
Have you ever felt utterly overwhelmed by the noise around you, the endless stream of opinions, expectations, and the relentless pressure of ‘keeping up’? Imagine this: ancient stoic philosophers over 2,000 years ago faced the same human emotions, struggl…