Conjugating verbs (SVFL)

Verb is a friendly part of speech. It happily accepts new members. We add new verbs all the time. Just listen: Jag snappade henne igår. Blippa först så kan du öppna dörren sen.

Snygg veganiserad lasange, har du instagrammat den? Snappa, blippa, veganisera, instagramma. Now, let’s make up a new verb. Here’s a creature. A fnurk.

And what’s a fnurk doing? Well, it Fnurkar. It really likes to guess. Fnurka And yesterday, it did the same thing, it sat there all day and fnurkade. All day long it has fnurkat.

If you are fluent in Swedish, then this wasn’t hard at all. You can understand the main forms of the verb, even if you haven’t heard them before. Fnurka, fnurkade, fnurkat. That’s because verbs follow a pattern, they are conjugated according to rules. Here are some verbs, in infinitive, present tense, simple past tense, past participle, and in the commanding, imperative, mood.

Cykla, cyklar, cyklade, cyklat, cykla! Skratta, skrattar, skrattade, skrattat, skratta! And so on. Do you see the pattern? In infinitive form, they end with an ‘a’.

In present tense, with ‘ar’. In simple past tense with ‘ade’. In perfect participle with ‘at’. And in the imperative form, they look just like the infinitive, ending with an ‘a’. Simple as pie.

But also not. This particular group of verbs, we can call the ‘ar’-verbs. Since they end with ‘ar’ in present tense. If you want a slightly fancier name for these verbs, go ahead and refer to them as verbs of the first conjugation. From that you probably figured out that there are more kinds of verbs, other conjugations.

Listen to these verbs: Fylla, fyller, fyllde, fyllt, fyll! Blåsa, blåser, blåste, blåst, blås! Verbs in this second group end in ‘er’ in present tense, and either ‘de’ or ‘te’ in simple past tense. Here are a few more ‘er’ verbs. Pause the film, read out loud, and see if you can identify more rules or patterns within this second group of verbs.

It’s time for the third group. In this, there are only about 40 verbs. Sy, syr, sydde, sytt, sy! Klä, klär, klädde, klätt, klä! You might want to call this group: short-verbs.

Here are a few more. Pause and read them aloud. Check to see that you know their meaning, and if you can find a pattern in their conjugation. Now you have three groups of verbs. But there are more!

Listen up. Svära, svär, svor, svurit, svär! Bita, biter, bet, bitit, bit! Finna, finner, fann, funnit, finn! Oh, is there any pattern at all here?

Yes. The simple past tense is short, without suffix, and with a different vowel than the present tense. And the perfect participle often ends with ‘it’. This is the fourth group, which is also called the strong verbs. There are about 130 strong verbs, and some of them are the most commonly used in the Swedish language.

As always, when trying to sort something socks, action figures, books, or verbs it works fine at first, but then you end up sitting there with a pile of stuff that really doesn’t fit any of the categories. The Swedish verbs that don’t fit even into the strong verbs, we call irregular verbs. Here are some of them: Stå Se Gå Vilja Veta Pause, and read all the forms aloud. Do you know of any others? Some of these are borderline cases, and some people think they ought to belong to the fourth group.

So, you have three neat groups of verbs, and two not so neat. Note that all new verbs, always belong to the first conjugation. Like for example: to fnurk.