--- title: Irregular verbs: goed, brung and other brave mistakes — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Irregular verbs: goed, brung and other brave mistakes», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Most English verbs make the past by adding -ed: jump, jumped; these are regular verbs, but about 200 common ones br --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / Irregular verbs: goed, brung and other… # Irregular verbs: goed, brung and other brave mistakes Lesson 9 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/0/) — Most English verbs make the past by adding -ed: jump, jumped; these are regular verbs, but about 200 common ones break the rule: go, went; run, ran; catch, caught; these are irregular. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/2/) — Irregular verbs come in little families: sing, sang, sung; swim, swam, swum; ring, rang, rung; and bring, brought; think, thought; buy, bought; catch, caught; teach, taught. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/3/) — Some forms are patchwork from history: "went" was once the past of an old verb "wend" (to go), and English borrowed it for go hundreds of years ago. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/4/) — Verbs change over time and between countries: Americans often say dove and snuck where British say dived and sneaked; and many dialects say "I seen him at the chippy", which is dialect, not stupidity. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/5/) — A regular verb adds -ed for the past (jump, jumped); an irregular verb changes in another way (go, went). - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/6/) — English has about 200 common irregular verbs, and children learn them one by one. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/8/) — Bring goes bring, brought, brought, like think, thought and buy, bought; "brung" is heard in some dialects, especially in the US, but is not standard English. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/9/) — Many irregular verbs have become regular over hundreds of years; reach once had an old past form like "raught" and now just says reached. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/10/) — In American English "dove" is common for the past of dive; British English says "dived"; both are correct in their own country. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/11/) — Swim goes swim, swam, swum: "I swam" alone and "I have swum" after have; sing, sang, sung and ring, rang, rung work the same way. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/12/) — "I seen" is common in many British, Irish and American dialects; standard English says "I saw" or "I have seen". - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/13/) — A chippy is a fish and chip shop. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/14/) — "Went" was once the past of the old verb "wend", meaning to go; when a verb's forms come from different words, it is called suppletion, and "be" (am, is, was, were) is built the same patchwork way. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/15/) — Catch goes catch, caught, caught, which rhymes with teach, taught; "sus" is slang for suspicious or a bit dodgy, made hugely popular with kids partly by the game Among Us. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/16/) — "Snuck" began in American dialects and is now very common in the US; in British English "sneaked" is the standard written form, and both are in major dictionaries. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/17/) — Drink goes drink, drank, drunk: "I drank" and "I have drunk"; people sometimes say "I've drank" to dodge the other meaning of drunk, but "I have drunk" is correct. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/9-irregular-verbs-goed-brung-and-brave-mistakes/18/) — Fly goes fly, flew, flown; in baseball "he flied out" (hit a high ball that was caught) is regular because it comes from the noun "fly ball". - ← previous: [Tenses: past, present and future](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/8-tenses-past-present-future/) - next →: [Plurals that make no sense: mice, sheep and geese](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/10-plurals-mice-sheep-and-geese/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)