It’s time to take a look at grammatik (grammar) again. (I bet you’ve savnet – missed – it!) If you … a certain kind of very active words, you can hardly … a sentence. In other words: Verbs are a necessary evil! :-]

Kaja spiser en is. Per spiste en is. Ungerne har spist en is. (Kaja eats an ice-cream. Per ate… The kids have eaten…)

As you know, normal – or ”weak” – verbs are piece of cake in Danish. You have a root (like spis-), you add an ending (-te or -ede in the past tense), and voila! The real trouble comes with the ”strong” verbs, since they’re irregular and you have to learn them by heart. It’s a little bit like learning to count.

If you’re the kind of learner that loves schemes and little tables, however, I’ve got some splendid news for you: There’s a method in the madness!

For example, if you know the inflection (the various forms) of at gå to walk, you can also inflect at få to get (the er/har split has something to do with movement – please don’t mind it too much now!):

at gå – går – gik – er gået

at få – får – fik – har fået

However, here comes to stand: at stå – står – stod – har stået. See? Nothing is clear-cut in the land of strong verbalization! But at least there are some neat patterns for you to lean on! 🙂

 

Have you noticed al the verbs that are inflected like at blive to become?

at blive – bliver – blev – er blevet

at skrive to write – skriver – skrev – har skrevet

at skrige to scream – skriver – skreg – har skreget

at bide to bite – bider – bed – har bidt

at lide to suffer – lider – led – har lidt

 

Or, with a vowel twist:

at nyde to enjoy – nyder – nød – har nydt

at snyde to cheat – snyder – snød – har snydt

at flyde to float – flyder – flød – har flydt

 

Then of course there’s also the happy family of verbs echoing at drikke to drink:

at drikke – drikker – drak – har drukket

at finde – finder – fandt – har fundet

at vinde – vinder – vandt – har vundet

 

Feel free to explore further patterns in your own list of wicked verbs!