Home → Irregular verbs → begin
Past tense of “begin”
🌅 To start something.
Number 21 of 175 by frequency, well inside the everyday core, and the vowel walks e-i → e-a → e-u. Worth learning properly rather than recognising vaguely.
Mistakes people make with “begin”
Not “begined”. Begin does not take -ed — the past simple is began, however regular it feels to add the ending.
Not “have began”. After have, has or had the verb switches to its third form: I have begun, never I have began. This one survives into quite advanced English, so it is worth over-learning.
Phrases you will actually hear
These are worth learning whole. A verb sticks far better inside a phrase somebody would really say than on its own in a table.
The vowel walks i → a → u
Only one letter is doing the work. begin becomes began becomes begun, and everything around the vowel stays where it is.
Say the three aloud and you can hear the staircase: e-i → e-a → e-u. This is the oldest verb pattern in the language, inherited from Germanic, and it is the one group where guessing actually works — meet a new verb of this shape and you can usually predict its forms.
The mistake to avoid is stopping halfway: I have began instead of I have begun. The u form belongs after have.
- Past simple: The concert began at seven last night.
- Past participle: The rain has just begun.
The same pattern — i → a → u — runs through 8 verbs:
Practise it
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