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
My Sister Got Malaria ....(And I Didn't) - Smarter Every Day 167
Video about global health issues. Now, here’s the deal: when you think about—let’s make a video about global health issues—you think about statistics and numbers and like money, or you think about your sister who served in the Peace Corps in Sub-Saharan A…
Natural selection and adaptation | Mechanisms of evolution | High school biology | Khan Academy
Hi everybody, Dr. Sammy here, your friendly neighborhood entomologist, and I was hoping that we could take a few minutes to talk about adaptation. What comes to mind when you think about adaptation? You might think of cryptic morphology that helps organi…
Fighting Fish on the Stand Up Rod | Wicked Tuna | National Geographic
Well, here we are. Sounds like the whole rest of the fleet went down south to Chatham. We’re sticking close to home though. We started using the stand up rod last year, and it’s been pretty lucky for us. It’s a bit different than fighting a Bluefin with o…
Exponential and logistic growth in populations | High school biology | Khan Academy
Let’s say that we were starting with a population of 1,000 rabbits, and we know that this population is growing at 10% per month. What I want to do is explore how that population will grow if it’s growing at 10% per month. So, let’s set up a little table …
Khan Academy request for donations
Hi everyone, Sal Khan here from Khan Academy. As you might notice, I am back in the walk-in closet where, uh, Khan Academy first started. I am socially distanced like I’m sure many of you all are. I just wanted to give you a quick message because I know …
How Much You Need To Invest By EVERY Age
What’s up you guys, it’s Graham here. So, I know I can’t be the only one who does this, but have you ever wondered how much does the average person have saved and invested by every age? Or what about how much income does it take to rank within the top one…