Main content
The vowel-shift irregular verb
This group of irregular verbs have vowel sounds that change in a predictable way, when they go from the present to the past tense.
Want to join the conversation?
Is past perfect the same as past participle or are they different?(18 votes)
They're a little different. The past participle is like... the adjective form of a verb, likebent. You can use it to describe something, likeThis bent fork is no good for eating spaghetti, or you can use the wordbentas a verb in the past tense, likeI bent your fork by accident.
The past perfect is a completed past action, as inI had bent the fork the night before, in a fit of rage.(34 votes)
How do you know if Y is a vowel or not?(6 votes)- It kind of depends on its context; it's relatively rare for a
yto act like a vowel when it's the first letter of a word:yell,yes,yonder,yikes!
The only exception to this that I can think of is names that come to us from French; these initialys show up in names that come from French, likeYvetteorYvonneorYves.
But in general, if it's at the beginning of a word, ayis more likely to be acting like a consonant, rather than a vowel. If it's in the middle or the end, likebicycleorsky, it's more likely to be acting like a vowel.(24 votes)
- How do we know when to use the past perfect?(5 votes)
It can be confusing, but there are two distinct ways in which we may use the past perfect tense.
1) It is used to express an action that had been completed a long time ago in the past. E.g. She had written a letter to David a year ago/ I had lost my belongings at the train station
2) The past perfect can be used to express completion of an action in the recent past relative to other actions taking place after it. The semantics of the sentence must always place the event expressed in past perfect before the event expressed in simple past. E.g. The train had left before she was able to reach the station.
(The past participle is referred to as past perfect throughout this video which is not accurate [as mentioned] so I do want to clarify that past perfect is Subject + Had + Past Participle)(12 votes)
Can you use two different tenses if you are talking about one verb with another?
For example, would it be grammatically correct to say:
"Yes please!" said Mia, taking off her jacket.
Said is in the past, while taking is the present tense form of take, but it's saying it happened THEN, so is it ok? Or should I say as she took off her jacket?(4 votes)
It sounds correct to me but I am not a professional.(4 votes)
- Is there a pattern in the irregular verbs?(2 votes)
There are various patterns, but no single one that covers all the varied irregularities. Irregular verbs may be irregular in "similar" ways, but not sufficiently so to constitute a "pattern".(7 votes)
Is it snuck or sneaked? Because I think snuck is a slang word?(2 votes)- I believe both are acceptable, but one form may be used more than the other word in a certain region. For example, sneaked might be used more than snuck in one place, and snuck might be used more than sneaked in another place.
@ Crystal Smith - This was probably the case in your region (refer above).
However, both are grammatically correct.(2 votes)
there are so mch videos bc there is sooooo much kids in the world(4 votes)- What does past p.mean?past perfect or past participle?(4 votes)
Can run be runs? For example, "He runs through the forest."(3 votes)- That works very well. Use it!(2 votes)
- What's the past particle?(2 votes)
- English verbs come in 6 basic forms (we're talking REGULAR verbs here)
Infinitive form (included the word to): EXAMPLE-- to care.
Basic present -- we care
3rd person present -- she cares
simple past -- she cared
present participle -- caring
past participle -- (looks just like the simple past, but isn't) -- cared
The present participle is used in the progressive aspect:
"She is caring for baby turtles."
The past participle is used in the perfect aspect: "She had cared for her aging grandmother."(3 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] Hello grammarians! We're talking about vowel
shifting in irregular verbs, which is gonna sound a little weird, but bear with me. To review what a vowel is super quick, a vowel is any sound
that your mouth can make while your tongue isn't
touching your lips or your teeth or the roof of your mouth, basically. In English we render vowels in the following way, a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y, or as it is commonly pronounced, aeiouy. That part's not true,
but here is what's true is that you produce vowels from different parts of your mouth. You can produce a vowel in
the front of your mouth, you can produce it in
the center of your mouth, you can produce it all the
way back in your throat. What does this have to
do with irregular verbs? I'm so glad you asked. Let's draw a chart. So I'm gonna put three
things on this chart, the present, the past,
and the past perfect, which is when you're
talking about something in the past that is completed, and we form that in English by combining that verb with have, so have walked, have said, have done. Now in most cases with most regular verbs, the past perfect and the past form are the same, the same thing, but in some very rare cases, and that's why we're talking about these, they're different. Let's begin with the first one. In the present tense, we say "I sing." In the past tense, we
would say "she sang," and in the past perfect, you would say "they have sung." So it's weird, right? Because the vowel changes this vowel sound, ih, ah, uh, actually bounces along your mouth. It goes from front, to middle, to back as you go further and
further back in time, which I think is really cool. Ih, uh, ah. Same thing with the word drink. In the present tense, it's I drink, in the past tense, it's I drank, and in the past perfect, it's I had drunk. There are other verbs that
follow this formula, too, like ring, rang, rung for ringing a bell, but for the rest of this,
we're just gonna talk about verbs where the past and the past perfect are the same, and there's still a vowel shift going on between the present and the past. So if you take a word like win, the present tense is win, the past tense is won, and the past perfect is also won. We had won the game. We won the game. So that vowel shift goes from ih, to uh. The verb to find. So in the present tense it's find and in the past and
past perfect it's found. It goes from i-ee to ow. Sit becomes sat, sneak becomes snuck, and run becomes ran, and run is a weird one because the past perfect form of run is run. He had run, not he had ran. Those are some of the
front to back sound shifts it, at, uh, or it, uh, or ite, ow, that you will encounter
when you're learning irregular verbs in English. You can learn anything, David out.