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[GRAMM] Verbs - past tense / er-verbs

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Basler Biker
Switzerland

[GRAMM] Verbs - past tense / er-verbs

Post by Basler Biker »

Past Tense
While it's great to be able to express what is happening right now, a lot of times we will want to talk about what happened earlier. This is were the past tense comes into play.

As with the present tense, there is no difference between I drew and I was drawing. Both are Jag ritade.

Let's look at how we do this in Swedish.

er-verbs
Present tense Past Tense English
häller hällde poured, was/were pouring
ringer ringde phoned, was/were phoning
läser läste read, was/were reading
köper köpte bought, was/were buying
hör hörde heard, was/were hearing
Ok, this group might look a bit crazy, but it really isn't. The above are all regular er-verbs. If the verb is regular and its present ends in -er, then the past tense is -de.

Unless, the core of the verb ends in either of p, t, k, or s. In this case it takes -te, because we find this easier to pronounce.

If the core ends in r, the regular er-verbs have no present ending, but it still gets its -de in the past tense. Unfortunately, if you see hör you can't see that it is an er-verb, but if you see hörde you immediately know it is a regular er-verb and that it's present form must be hör (only regular er-verbs have a past tense in -de).


BB - Basler Biker - Positivity and constructiveness will prevail
Native :belgium: :netherlands: / fluent :fr: :de: :uk: / learning :sweden: / fan of :switzerland: (bs/bl)

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