The Verb Story

Chapter 5: Irregular Verbs

The next morning, Sammy went to into his older brother’s room. His brother, Marty, was sitting on his bed eating a slice of chocolate Bavarian cake. Sammy crept onto his brother’s bed, and said, “Marty, do you know about regular and irregular verbs?”

“Sure, I’ve been to school; irregular are words that aren’t regular,” Marty said in a reedy, nasal voice.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong,” Sammy said slyly, “ Irregular verbs are verbs that have past and past participles that aren’t formed by adding you’re standard ‘–ed.’”

“Mmhhmm…” Marty said as he stuffed another large slice of cake in his mouth.

“Let us do an example, brother dear,” Sammy said, “‘Spin.’ Its past tense is ‘spun,’ and its past participle tense is ‘have spun.’ You see, normally you’d add ‘-ed.’ ‘Spined?’ I think not. ‘Spun’ is the correct spelling.”

“That’s all great, now do you mind, I’m kind of busy eating my third piece of cake here,” Marty said as he got off the bed with lots of struggling and creaking, until he managed to get to the door, huffing and puffing, and ushered Sammy out.