Home → Irregular verbs → i → a → u
i → a → u
The vowel walks through i, a, u. A whole choir of verbs follows it. The model to keep in your head is sing · sang · sung, and 8 of the 175 verbs on this site follow it.
Where this group comes from
This is the oldest machinery in the language still visible in daily use. Before English had an -ed ending at all, verbs marked the past by changing their vowel, and a handful of them still do it in a clean three-step: i in the base, a in the past, u in the participle.
It is the one group where guessing works. Meet a new verb with this shape and you can usually predict its forms, which is not true anywhere else on this site. Say sing · sang · sung and drink · drank · drunk aloud and the staircase is audible.
All 8 verbs in this pattern
| Base form | Past simple | Past participle |
|---|---|---|
| begin | began | begun |
| drink | drank | drunk |
| sing | sang | sung |
| swim | swam | swum |
| ring | rang | rung |
| sink | sank / sunk | sunk |
| shrink | shrank / shrunk | shrunk |
| spring | sprang / sprung | sprung |
Practise all 175 verbs on your phone
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