Common English verbs. Verbs in English

We have already become acquainted with the various classifications of English verbs, and the division into regular and irregular is one of the most important. Today we will look at regular verbs of the English language, understand how forms of different tenses are formed, and study their main features.

Distinctive features

Regular verbs in English are those in which the 2nd form (past tense) and Participle 2 are formed according to the general rule - the ending –ed is added to the base. They make up the main layer of verbs in the English language and are quite convenient to use, because do not require memorization of three forms. All that is required of us is to remember and learn to distinguish regular verbs from irregular ones and do not forget to apply the rule described above.

Pronunciation rules for ending –ed

An important point that deserves attention and time is the pronunciation and writing of verbs ending in –ed. As with other rules of reading and pronunciation in English, there are variations that you need to remember:

• after consonants with voiceless pronunciation, the ending -ed is pronounced [t];
• after vowels and consonants with voiced pronunciation it is pronounced [d];
• only after the sounds [t] and [d] is it pronounced

Using the table below with examples, you can thoroughly understand this issue.

Spelling features

• The silent “e” at the end is discarded when adding the ending:
  to arrive – arrived
• If a word ends with one consonant preceded by a short vowel, the last letter is doubled:
  to drop – dropped
• The last letter is doubled even if it appears in a polysyllabic word after a stressed syllable:
  to prefer – preferred
• The final -y, preceded by a consonant, is replaced by –i when adding the ending.
  to fly - flied
• In British English, the final –l is doubled when the ending is added:
  to compel – compelled

Note: in the American version there is no such doubling.

How many regular verbs are there in English, the most used ones

As noted above, regular English verbs are the most numerous segment of the verb group and it is almost impossible to accurately count their number (this is also due to different approaches to counting: some sources believe, for example, behave And misbehave as one word, and other sources as two, so the data may differ very much)

But most linguists agree that for comfortable everyday communication it is advisable to know about 200 irregular verbs, and at least three times as many correct ones. There are various frequency dictionaries, where words are ranked according to the frequency of their use, as well as lists of the most common words for memorization. It is recommended for beginners to start with easier lists, consisting of 100-250 words, and for professionals to work on thousands of words.

Here you will find English with transcription and translation, which are the most popular

Often confused

One of the greatest difficulties and most common mistakes that students encounter is that they often mistake irregular English verbs for regular ones and vice versa.

Words often cause difficulties turn, return, invite, wait, walk, dance, jump, play, last, want, try, die, cry, wash, help, need, travel, live, stay, visit, decide, study, look, call, arrive, clean, ask, answer, as well as work and cook. It is necessary to remember that they are all correct and form the past tense according to the standard rule

Games and exercises

As you know, any information is best absorbed if it is presented in an interactive form. Therefore, to quickly and easily learn the correct verbs, use bright cards that will help you remember new words and give you the opportunity to test yourself

Try the WordSearch mindfulness game. Find the following words in the past form:

Carry, copy, dance, enjoy, laugh, live
Love, plan, play, rob, smile, stay
Stop, travel, try, visit, watch, work

Perform to consolidate the material covered

As you can see, Regular Verbs, although they are a fairly extensive topic to study, their main advantage is that they strictly obey grammatical rules and therefore it is much easier to learn and use them in speech. More practice and perseverance, and soon their application will not present any difficulties for you.

Verb is a part of speech that means something action, and action is understood in a broad sense: be, sleep, and also the absence of action: not being, not sleeping, and so on.

Let's list grammatical categories English verb:

• mood;

Classification of verbs

By morphological structure verbs are divided into:

Postpositions often dramatically change the meaning of the main verb: to give- to give, whereas to give in– give up; to put- put, place, to put down- write down.

In my own way meaning English verbs are:

• semantic;
• official;
• auxiliary;
• modal.

Semantic (Notional Verbs) verbs have their own lexical meaning, and therefore can independently act as a predicate:

I am riding a bicycle, I speak English

Another name for these verbs is significant.

Service verbs have completely or partially lost their lexical meaning, and therefore are part of the predicate along with the semantic verb:

I am riding a bicycle, I will send you an invitation.

Based on this, we can distinguish types of service verbs:

Here you can find a table of irregular English verbs with translation into Russian and transcription, videos on learning and memorizing irregular verbs, links.

There is a special category of verbs in the English language that does not follow generally accepted rules when forming the past participle. They are usually called “wrong”. Unlike “regular” verbs, which are appended with the ending –ed to form the past participle, these verbs either remain unchanged or take unusual forms that are not always easy to remember. For example:

put – put – put;
drive – drove – driven.

If the first verb is easy to learn and use in sentences, then the second one has to be learned directly by memorization.

Where did such difficulties with some verbs come from? Scientists have concluded that these are some kind of “fossils” remaining in the language from ancient times. During its development, the English language adopted a large number of words from other European languages, but some words remained unchanged. It is this category that irregular verbs belong to.

Table of irregular English verbs:

Video on learning and memorizing irregular English verbs:

Top 100 irregular verbs in English.

In this video, the author analyzes the most popular irregular verbs in the English language (top 100, compiled by himself). Examples are given for all irregular verbs, voiceovers, etc. The most commonly used irregular verbs come first, then the least used.

Pronunciation of irregular English verbs.

British version of English irregular verbs. The author gives you the opportunity to repeat after him and thus hone the correct pronunciation of irregular verbs.

Learning irregular English verbs using rap.

An interesting video for learning English irregular verbs superimposed on rap.

Examples of using irregular verbs:

Greetings to all lovers of English and grammar in particular:-P. Today you will find an interesting and useful selection again. Someone might think that irregular, modal and phrasal verbs that are important for correct speech are all you need to know. You are deeply mistaken if you think that studying regular verbs is a useless task, since everyone knows the simple mechanism when a word in the past is added [-ed]. Regular verbs of the English language In fact, regular verbs are just like irregular verbs and any others. They display the noun. If you have a noun Cook, then you also have a verb to cook. Just like when there was an ordinary word “google”, which was used to mean “search engine”, but today the English language has given us “to google”, which has come to mean “search in the google search engine”.

Thus, by studying regular English verbs, you learn this unit, the noun, and the grammar of the formation of the past tense - three in one. Any English language course includes the study of these words in its program. Therefore, having studied difficult irregular, modal, phrasal verbs, you should not ignore ordinary regular verbs. These words are an important part of expressing emotions and feelings and constructing sentences.

Formation of regular verbs

Everyone knows that regular verbs are formed by adding the ending to the second participle and the past tense [-ed]: Paint - painted - drawish b, however, following this rule, it is necessary to take into account several important nuances:

• If the word ends in “e”, then we do not duplicate it and add only the ending [-d]: Like - liked - like
• If the lexeme ends with a voiceless or hissing consonant, then the ending [-ed] is pronounced like “t”: Polish - polished - ["pɒlɪʃt] - polish, S top — stopped — - stop. Please note that when forming the Past Simple in one-syllable verbs, the last consonant is doubled
• In the case when a unit ends with a voiced consonant or vowel, the familiar [-ed] takes on the sound “d”: Destroy - destroyed - - to destroy. By the way, when a lexeme ends in “y” and is preceded by a consonant letter, then when [-ed] is added, the sound “y” is reduced and “i” appears in its place: Study - studied - ["stʌdɪd] - to study. In the case when there is a vowel before “y”, no additional changes occur
• If the word ends in “d” or “t”, then [-ed] is pronounced as “id”: Pretend - pretended - pretend, Start - Started - - start, begin

Regular English verbs do not cause any particular difficulties, since the scheme of their formation is quite simple and transparent.

Table of 50 regular English verbs

You can download and print this table

Everyone who studies a foreign language needs to speak quickly and does not want to deal with theory and boring rules. And this is a common mistake that slows down progress in learning and creates a “language barrier.”

A proven fact: without understanding the basic theoretical foundations and elements of the language, learning English is much more difficult, especially if you do it on your own. When choosing words to express your thoughts in a foreign language, it is very important to know what part of speech you need, what properties it has, how you can change it, what its function is, what place in the sentence to put it.

We have already become acquainted with the parts of speech in English and the basic concepts that every student should know in the article. Now it's time to focus on each part of speech.

In English, as in any other language, the central element of a sentence is usually a verb. That is why it has so many forms and times, and special attention is paid to it.

Almost anyone who attended public school should remember the rote definition of what a verb is. The simplest one is: A verb is a word that denotes an action and answers the question “What to do”?.

But in practice it turns out that not every verb answers this question, but still remains a verb. There are many classifications of verbs: by structure, by meaning, but, as I promised, we will not go into unnecessary theoretical details.

We will conditionally divide all the verbs that you will encounter in English into five categories:

1. Semantic verbs.
2. Phrasal verbs.
3. Modal verbs.
4. Auxiliary verbs.

1. Semantic verbs.

Semantic verbs - the most numerous category of verbs. These are exactly the words that answer the question: What to do?

All actions that we perform convey semantic verbs:

Semantic verbs cannot appear before the subject in an affirmative sentence; they can be used with modal verbs and auxiliary verbs to form different tenses:

I can work. - I can work. (modal + semantic)
He is sleeping. - He's sleeping. (auxiliary + semantic)

Semantic verbs cannot independently form negations and questions, so they always need auxiliary verbs, which are placed at the beginning of the sentence in questions and have a negative particle not in negations:

Do you read in English? - Do you read in English?
I do not read in English. - I don't read English.

Semantic verbs can add different endings. In it -s/es when talking about a third person (he reads, she sleeps, it works). The ending is added -ing(sitting, sleeping, working) . In the past tense (), (worked, looked) is added to regular semantic verbs, and irregular ones have three forms that need to be remembered (sit - sat - sat, write - wrote - written). By the way, if you still don’t know how to learn irregular verbs or are constantly confused by them, keep studying them.

2. Phrasal verbs.

Phrasal verbs differ from semantic ones in that they have two or three parts. First- an ordinary semantic verb, and rest: prepositions or adverbs that give a verb a different meaning.

For example:

Sit - sit
sit down - sit down
get - receive
get up - get out of bed

Often the meaning of a phrasal verb can be determined by the preposition in combination with the context, but in many cases the meaning of a phrasal verb cannot be guessed from these signs, since many phrasal verbs have more than one meaning.

At first, it seems that remembering phrasal verbs is simply unrealistic. But that's not true. Some phrasal verbs are used more often, some less frequently, and some have a narrow scope of use. Textbooks begin to introduce us to the most popular phrasal verbs from the level pre-intermediate. To level upper-intermediate there are many more of them. In colloquial speech it is difficult to do without phrasal verbs, so you will need to learn them one way or another.

If you are already faced with the problem of learning phrasal verbs, then I have something for you, from which you will learn several ways to determine the meaning of a phrasal verb. In addition, on the separate blog pages dedicated to phrasal verbs, you can find many articles in which phrasal verbs are divided into topics to make it easier for you to remember them.

3. Auxiliary verbs.

The essence and function of this linguistic phenomenon is already explained by its name. It serves to form various types of utterances. In English textbooks it is called auxiliary verb, and in my classes for convenience I use the name helping verb or assistant verb. These are not scientific terms, but you don’t need them, the main thing is to make it clear.

There is more than one auxiliary verb in English. There are three of them: do, be And have. And also their forms, of which there are many more. Verbs and forms vary depending on the tense in which you are speaking and the person you are speaking about. The verb do and its forms does And did- auxiliary in Simple group tenses, verb to be (am, is, are, was, were) used as an auxiliary in the Continuous tenses, and have (with forms has And had) is a required attribute of tenses of the Perfect group.

Below is a table of auxiliary verbs by tense and person.

Auxiliary verbs are not translated into Russian, but this does not free us from the need to remember and use them. It is with the help of auxiliary verbs that we show the time to which our statement refers.

In all tenses, without exception, negations and questions are formed using auxiliary verbs. In negatives, the particle not is added to the auxiliary verb, and in a question, it is the auxiliary verb that comes first in the sentence.

As for statements, auxiliary verbs are used in all tenses, with the exception of and.

It is important to note that in an English sentence the auxiliary verb has its place, and the place depends on. In an affirmative sentence the verb must be after the subject(actor):

I am reading a book. (Present Continuous)
We have done the task. (Present Perfect)
They will call you. (Future Simple)
She was sleeping. (Past Continuous)

In negation, all verbs are also found after the actor. The particle not is added to the auxiliary and modal verbs, followed by a semantic or phrasal verb:

I am not reading a book. (Present Continuous)
We have not done the task. (Present Perfect)
They will not call you. (Future Simple)
She was not sleeping. (Past Continuous)

In a question, the verb comes in front of the subject (auxiliary verb, modal verb, verb to be), and the semantic and phrasal verbs remain after the subject:

Am I reading a book? (Present Continuous)
Have we done the task? (Present Perfect)
Will they call you? (Future Simple)
Was she sleeping? (Past Continuous)

Auxiliaries are also used to form the passive voice and have shortened forms.

4. Verb to be.

This verb is so unique that I put it in a separate category. It can be both semantic and auxiliary. By itself, it acts as a semantic one in the present, past and future tense, and means “to be, to appear, to be,” although it is not translated into Russian in the present tense:

I am happy. - I (am) happy.
I was happy. - I was happy.
I will be happy. - I will be happy.

In combination with the ing form of the semantic verb, the verb to be forms group times Continuous, and its future tense form will participates in the formation of all future tenses of the English language.

5. Modal verbs.

Modal verbs - this is a separate group of verbs that are not used by themselves, but only in combination with semantic verbs. Modal verbs add some additional, modal meaning to the semantic verb: I can, I can, I will, I must do something. You probably know examples of modal verbs. Here they are: can, could, must, may, might, will, would, shall, should, ought. Often a modal verb cannot be translated without combining it with a semantic verb.

What do modal verbs have in common? They are all used with the infinitive without a particle to(Bare infinitive). There is one exception: verb ought to .

In addition, characteristic feature of modal verbs- the fact that they independently form interrogative and negative forms; they do not need auxiliary verbs.

The hardest part about learning modal verbs is understanding their meanings and functions. So that you can always accurately express your thought and the interlocutor understands you correctly, the choice of a modal verb plays a big role. Modal verbs usually have several meanings, and it would be very tedious to consider them all in one article, so I recommend that you get acquainted with each modal verb separately, which you can do on the pages of our blog Enginform.

If, after reading this material about verbs, you find gaps in your knowledge, then do not rush to bury yourself in textbooks; you do not need to cram all the rules that you find. It is enough to start classes, which will help you understand the intricacies of English grammar gradually, in parallel with practice. There is absolutely no need to go somewhere and waste your time. You can study comfortably at home or from the office whenever it suits you. If you want to try, leave it in Enginform.

In conclusion, I would like to remind you once again that the language you are learning is different from the one you are used to speaking, because each language is a unique and original system. Pay attention to the differences, do not forget about a minimum of theory and this will make your process of learning English easier!