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This is followed by the simple past tense , and then the past participle. If there are irregular present tense forms (see below), these are given in parentheses after the infinitive. (The present participle and gerund forms of verbs, ending in -ing, are always regular. In English, these are used as verbs, adjectives, and nouns.)
The verb read /ɹiːd/ has the same spelling in all three forms, but not the same pronunciation for the past tense and past participle /ɹɛd/, as it exhibits vowel shortening. In a few cases the past tense of an irregular verb has the same form as the infinitive of a different verb.
The base form or plain form of an English verb is not marked by any inflectional ending.. Certain derivational suffixes are frequently used to form verbs, such as -en (sharpen), -ate (formulate), -fy (electrify), and -ise/ize (realise/realize), but verbs with those suffixes are nonetheless considered to be base-form verbs.
The past tense of regular verbs is made by adding -d or -ed to the base form of the verb, while those of irregular verbs are formed in various ways (such as see→saw, go→went, be→was/were). With regular and some irregular verbs, the past tense form also serves as a past participle. For full details of past tense formation, see English verbs.
This has happened in the case of the English word went, which was originally the past tense of wend, but has come to be used instead as the past tense of go. The verb be also has a number of suppletive forms (be, is, was, etc., with various different origins) – this is common for copular verbs in Indo-European languages.
The simple past or past simple, sometimes also called the preterite, consists of the bare past tense of the verb (ending in -ed for regular verbs, and formed in various ways for irregular ones, with the following spelling rules for regular verbs: verbs ending in -e add only –d to the end (e.g. live – lived, not *liveed), verbs ending in -y ...