Past Simple: Irregular Verbs (go, see, have)

Level: A2. Many of the most useful English verbs do not follow the regular -ed pattern. Their past forms are irregular: you simply have to learn them. The good news is that they behave like every other past-simple verb — one form for all subjects, and no -ed.

The rule

A verb is irregular when its past simple is not made by adding -ed. Instead it has a special form that you memorise: go → went, see → saw, have → had, take → took. There is no spelling rule that produces these — the forms come from older stages of English and must be learned as vocabulary.

Everything else about the past simple still applies. The irregular form is used for a finished action at a past time, and it does not change with the subject: I went, you went, she went, they went. You never add -s and you never add -ed.

The hardest part is simply the number of them, but most everyday conversation uses the same few dozen verbs. Learn the high-frequency ones first (be, have, do, go, get, make, say, see, come, take) and you will cover most of what you need.

Common irregular verbs

The -ought/-aught group (think → thought, buy → bought, teach → taught, catch → caught) and the i → a group (sing → sang, swim → swam, begin → began) are worth learning together, because one pattern unlocks several verbs at once.

How to say it

A few irregular pasts are easy to mis-say. These are the ones learners most often get wrong:

The silent -gh in bought, thought, caught and taught surprises many learners — the letters are written but never pronounced.

Example sentences

Common mistakes

• ❌ I goed to school. → ✅ I went to school. Go is irregular: the past is went, never goed.
• ❌ She buyed a car. → ✅ She bought a car. Buy becomes bought.
• ❌ We thinked about it. → ✅ We thought about it. Think becomes thought.
• ❌ He taked the bus. → ✅ He took the bus. Take becomes took.
• ❌ They putted it there. → ✅ They put it there. Put does not change in the past.
• ❌ She seed the show. → ✅ She saw the show. See becomes saw.

A short conversation

A: Did you have a good holiday? B: Yes! We went to Japan and saw the temples in Kyoto. A: Wonderful. What did you eat? B: We had sushi almost every day and I bought far too many souvenirs.

Usage notes

• Only the past-simple form here. Irregular verbs also have a past participle (gone, seen, taken) used with have. In this lesson you need only the single past-simple form: went, saw, took.
• The verb be is special. Its past has two forms — was (I/he/she/it) and were (you/we/they) — unlike every other verb, which has just one. That is covered in its own lesson.
• Same uses as regular verbs. Irregular and regular pasts mix freely in one sentence: I got up, had breakfast and walked to work. The tense and time reference are identical; only the ending differs.
• Frequency first. Don’t try to memorise hundreds at once. The twenty or so most common verbs cover the great majority of real speech.

Compared with…

• Regular past verbs add -ed with predictable spelling (work → worked, study → studied). Irregular verbs break that pattern and must be learned individually, but both are used in exactly the same way. See Past Simple: Regular Verbs and -ed Spelling.
• Present perfect uses the past participle (the third form: gone, seen, done) with have/has, and links the action to now. Compare I saw that film (finished, past) with I have seen that film (at some point, relevant now). See Present Perfect for Experience.

Quick recap before you practise.

Practice

Quiz

Recap cheat-sheet

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