Spoke or Spoken: Which Is Correct? (Helpful Examples)

The past tense can be tricky to wrap your head around. Luckily, this article (and a range of others) is here to help you understand it. We’ll look at the past tense of “speak” today and try to figure out how the two different past tense forms work with it.

“Spoke” is the simple past tense and is correct when we want to talk about someone “speaking” in the past. “Spoken” is the past participle form of “speak,” which needs an auxiliary verb like “have” alongside it in a sentence before it is grammatically correct.

We can’t use the past participle on its own. Without an auxiliary verb, it makes no sense. These examples will show you what we mean about each verb form:

You might benefit from referring to this information to help you remember which form works where:

The simple past tense is easy to use, so we’ll start by explaining it.

“Spoke” is correct when used with a pronoun. Any pronoun works, and it means that someone or something was “speaking” in the past.

There is nothing more that can be done to affect the outcome of the “speaking” event.

The verb form “spoke” stays the same no matter which pronoun you use. It’s a good way to learn about the verb since it remains uniform.

Naturally, the simple past tense is just that; it’s “simple.” We can show you how you might use it in the following examples:

“Spoke” is the simple past tense, which works alongside a pronoun. We use it to talk about “speaking” in the past, with no possible way to do anything more about the event in the present.

“Spoken” is the more complex of the two. The past participle of any verb often comes with extra rules, and it doesn’t work on its own in any sentence structure.

“Spoken” is correct because it’s the past participle, meaning we need an auxiliary verb like “have” to turn it into the perfect tense. There are three possible perfect tenses we can use when writing with the past participle (past, present, and future).

The verb form of “spoken” never changes, no matter what perfect tense you write in. Instead, you should change the verb form of the auxiliary verb to indicate which perfect tense is being used.

As you can see, “have” changes tense based on the perfect tense case we use.

The past perfect uses “had” because it’s the past tense of “have.” It means that an event happened in the past and might still impact something in the present.

The present perfect uses “have” because it’s the present tense verb form. It means that someone started “speaking” previously and continues to do so in the present.

The future perfect uses “will” alongside “have” to show that the thing hasn’t happened yet. It creates hypothetical future scenarios based on the actions someone carries out in the present.

We’ll split the examples into three sections so you can understand what each of the perfect tenses does to the verb format.

“Had spoken” is the past perfect tense. It means that someone has “spoken” in the past about an issue, but the issue still has some kind of relevance or impact on a present event that’s taking place.

“Have spoken” is the present perfect tense. It means that someone has started “speaking” in the past and continues to do so or is just finishing doing so in the present. They could have started ages ago, or they could have started only a few seconds ago (context-dependent).

“Will have spoken” is the future perfect tense. It means that a future event will be made possible based on what the actions of someone in the present are. Usually, an “if” clause is present in this tense to indicate how the hypothetical event might take place.

“Have spoken” is correct because the past participle (“spoken”) requires an auxiliary verb like “have,” which turns it into the present perfect tense. “Have spoke” is never correct because “spoke” requires no auxiliary verbs (it is only the simple past tense).

“Spoke” and “spoken” are the two past tense forms of “to speak.” We use “spoke” as the simple past tense, which doesn’t have complicated rules. “Spoken” is the past participle, and we need to remember the auxiliary verb forms and rules when using it in the perfect tense.

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Martin holds a Master’s degree in Finance and International Business. He has six years of experience in professional communication with clients, executives, and colleagues. Furthermore, he has teaching experience from Aarhus University. Martin has been featured as an expert in communication and teaching on Forbes and Shopify. Read more about Martin here.