When trying to memorize all the rules and exceptions in the English language, verbs can seem pretty scary. Even native English speakers can’t always explain how to conjugate a verb. Is there a conjugation trick? Sort of. The same rules can't be applied to every verb, but let's get started.
How Many Tenses Are There?
A verb is a part of speech (a word) used to indicate an action, occurrence, or state of being. The infinitive or base form is the word "to" plus the verb — for example, "to walk," "to play," "to eat," "to sleep," "to walk." It’s getting past the infinitive that can be confusing.
There's not a single word to express a verb, so the tense of the verb is extremely important. There are 12 different ways to conjugate a verb. Let’s look at the regular verb "to change." In these examples, "I" is the subject of the verb and could be replaced by he/she/it/they/we/our.
- Present Simple: I change
- Present Continuous: I am changing
- Present Perfect: I have changed
- Present Perfect Continuous: I have been changing
- Past Simple: I changed / I did change
- Past Continuous: I was changing
- Past Perfect: I had changed
- Past Perfect Continuous: I had been changing
- Future Simple: I will change
- Future Continuous: I will be changing
- Future Perfect: I will have changed
- Future Perfect Continuous: I will have been changing
Native English speakers tend to learn how to use these tenses naturally, and for other learners, understanding the parts of speech and how to conjugate verbs often transfers between languages.
Don’t Get Tense About Tense
To simplify things a bit, look at the infinitive, present tense, past tense, and present participle verb forms. Once these forms are understood, it’s easy to construct the rest of the tenses. Let’s go back to the verb "to walk."
"Walk" is a regular verb. "Walk," by itself, is the infinitive form. If you put the preposition "to" before walk, that’s still the infinitive form. When describing yourself, pair the pronoun "I" with the infinitive form of the verb. "I walk." If using the singular third person pronoun (he/she/it), attach an “s” to the end of the word. "He walks, she walks, it walks."
(Note: "They" can also be used as a singular pronoun. Read how this usage goes back hundreds of years.)
If you walk in the past tense, you walked. The "-ed" suffix at the end of a regular verb shows that the action took place in the past. That one is consistent in first, second, and third person. Nice and simple. "I walked, we walked, he walked."
If the action is currently taking place, tack "-ing" onto the end of the infinitive to make it a present participle. If you’re walking, you’re currently on your way somewhere.
To complete verb conjugations, sometimes helping verbs are needed. Adding these verbs to a conjugation helps to clarify the meaning and express verb tense. The helping, or auxiliary, verbs are:
- To be: am, is, are, was, were, be, been
- To have: have, has, had
- To do: do, does, did
Except These Verbs
As in any language, English verbs have their exceptions. There aren't concrete rules for irregular verbs because each one conjugates differently. Sometimes they don’t use the standard "-ed" or "-ing" when they change tense. Sometimes the conjugated verb seems to be an entirely different word altogether. For example, "I go" and "I went" are the present and past tense conjugations of the verb "to go." And sometimes verbs don't change at all when conjugated: "to hit" is "I hit" in present and past tense.
More about irregular verbs on another day.