These little suckers aren't conjugated like other verbs. Which means, well, the best thing is just to show you! The grammar rules themselves can be obtuse. Most of the confusion exists in conjugating the present and past tenses of these verbs, so that's our focus here.

Regular Verbs Are Conjugated Thusly:

Present Tense

I walk.

You walk.

He/she walks.

They walk.

Past Tense

I walked.

You walked.

He/she walked.

They walked.

Now take a look at two demon irregular verbs lots of people mess up with. This mix-up is compounded by the fact that the two verbs are also very close to each other in spelling and sound, lie and lay.

Lie is what you do when you fall into bed. Which is, you lie down.

Lay is what you do to something else, such as you lay the book on the table (you never lie a book on a table.). This has to do with whether or not a verb is transitive or intransitive, but we needn't go it to that right now.

So, here we go with to lie (not as in to tell a fibb," but "to recline"):

Present Tense

I lie down.

You lie down.

He/She lies down.

They lie down.

Past Tense

I lay down.

You lay down.

He/she lay down.

They lay down.

OK, here's the scoop on the verb "to lay."

Present Tense

I lay the book on the table.

You lay the book on the table.

He/she lays the book on the table.

They lay the books on the table

Past Tense

I laid the book on the table.

You laid the book on the table.

He/she laid the book on the table.

They laid the books on the table.

Regular Verbs v. Irregular Verbs

Basically it boils down to this. For all regular verbs, the past tense is formed by adding -ed.

But this doesn't hold true for irregular verbs. Examples?

I go (present tense).

I went (past tense).

I have gone (past participle, 'cause it has a "helping" verb in front of it).

The biggest problem here is that children by the age of five have learned by ear the verb conjugations, whether correctly or incorrectly. And if they learned them incorrectly (i.e., "He done went."), they have to start all over and memorize the correct conjugations.

And this is way harder than learning by "ear," because the correct verb forms of irregular verbs just don't "sound right to them" (because they learned them the wrong way by ear at a very early age) and that's a big barrier they have to overcome.

I think if parents knew just how important it is to teach young children good language habits, they'd put more time and energy into it. We know they are just like little parrots and repeat "everything they hear," good and bad.

But the upside to this? Young children can master a foreign language much, much faster than an adult!

If you find yourself tripped up and confused by irregular verbs and their conjugation, the only remedy is to get a grammar book and memorize the correct tenses. Also numerous great online resources are available for learning and practicing (exercises) proper irregular verb conjugation.

Just enter the phrase "irregular verbs" in a Google search and you will be overwhelmed. (I am overwhelmed. You are overwhelmed. etc.) But every English grammar book, old and new, has a section on commonly misused irregular verbs, because, well, they are so commonly misused!