Past Simple: Talking About What Happened
Regular and irregular past forms, negatives, questions — and the irregular verbs worth learning first.
Past simple describes finished actions at a finished time: yesterday, last week, in 2019.
Regular verbs: add -ed
work → worked, play → played, want → wanted
Spelling notes:
- ends in -e → add -d: like → liked
- consonant + -y → -ied: study → studied
- short vowel + consonant → double it: stop → stopped
Irregular verbs
There is no rule — these must be learned. The most frequent ones:
| Base | Past |
|---|---|
| go | went |
| have | had |
| do | did |
| say | said |
| see | saw |
| take | took |
| come | came |
| make | made |
| get | got |
| know | knew |
Good news: the past form is the same for every subject. I went, she went, they went.
Negatives and questions use "did"
Here the main verb goes back to its base form — this is the classic error.
- ✅ I didn't go. (not "didn't went")
- ✅ Did you see it? (not "Did you saw")
All the past meaning sits in did, so the main verb doesn't repeat it.
Was and were
The verb be is different again — no did needed.
- I / he / she / it was
- you / we / they were
- I wasn't at home. / Were you there?
Time expressions
Past simple usually appears with a finished time: yesterday, last night, two days ago, in 2019, when I was a child.
Try it yourself
The quiz below targets the "didn't went" trap and the was/were split.