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The preterite and past participle forms of irregular verbs follow certain patterns. These include ending in -t (e.g. build, bend, send), stem changes (whether it is a vowel, such as in sit, win or hold, or a consonant, such as in teach and seek, that changes), or adding the [n] suffix to the past participle form (e.g. drive, show, rise ...
The verbs ser (to be) and ir (to go) both exhibit irregularities in the present, imperfect and preterite forms (note that these two verbs have the same preterite fui). Together with ver (to see) and prever (to foresee), they are the only four verbs with irregular imperfect indicative.
The English language has many irregular verbs, approaching 200 in normal use – and significantly more if prefixed forms are counted. In most cases, the irregularity concerns the past tense (also called preterite) or the past participle.
For other irregular verbs and their common patterns, see the article on Spanish irregular verbs. The tables include only the "simple" tenses (that is, those formed with a single word), and not the "compound" tenses (those formed with an auxiliary verb plus a non-finite form of the main verb), such as the progressive, perfect, and passive voice.
Examples of verbs that have anomalous stems in the preterite include most verbs ending in -ducir as well as most verbs that are irregular in the "yo" form of the present tense (including traer). In most Iberian Mainland Spanish and, to a lesser extent, Mexican Spanish, there is still a strong distinction between the preterite and the present ...
Virtually all verbs of the third conjugation (-ir), if they have an -e-or -o-as the last vowel of their stem, undergo a vowel-raising change whereby e changes to i and o changes to u, in some of their forms (for details, see Spanish irregular verbs).
For -er or -ir verbs, replace the -er or -ir ending with -iendo; e.g. comer, escribir, dormir → comiendo, escribiendo, durmiendo (note that dormir undergoes the stem vowel change that is typical of -ir verbs). In -er verbs (and some -ir verbs, like disminuir) whose stem ends with a vowel, the i of the -iendo ending is replaced by y: e.g. leer ...
The past participle of regular verbs is identical to the preterite (past tense) form, described in the previous section. For irregular verbs, see English irregular verbs. Some of these have different past tense and past participle forms (like sing–sang–sung); others have the same form for both (like make–made–made).