Drink, drank, drunk

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Some English verbs have irregular forms that many of us learn using irregular verbs lists. While this may be helpful sometimes, it often means we focus too much on the spelling instead of learning the right pronunciation.
Speakers of some languages find it difficult to distinguish the different forms of verbs like drink, sing, and swim, for example. The simple past forms drank, sang, and swam are pronounced with the vowel sound /æ/. On the other hand, the past participles drunk, sung, and swum are pronounced with the sound /ᴧ/.
Notice that the letters 'a' and 'u' often represent the sounds /æ/ and /ᴧ/ respectively. The difference between words like cat and cut, or hat and hut, is the same we find in some irregular verbs where the past form is spelled with 'a' and the past participle is spelled with 'u'.
Knowing this may also help us with other irregular verbs. The three forms of cut (cut - cut - cut) are all said /kᴧt/, and both the simple past and past participle of sit sound exactly the same  – /sæt/. So, the correct pronunciation of run – as well as its past and past participle forms ran and run – is easy to guess.





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