Preterite/Past tense in Norwegian

Preterite/Past tense

GRAMMAR RULES

The past tense (preteritum)

The past tense (preteritum) refers to something that happened at a specific time in the past, or happened repeatedly in the past.

Norwegian verbs can be classified as either WEAK (endings are added to the root of the verb to form the past tense) or STRONG (involving a vowel change in the root -- often no ending at all.)

Basic Grammar Rules

There are fewer strong verbs than weak verbs, so you should learn to recognise those and then assume that the rest are weak.

Memorise the strong verb. The rest of the verbs are then the weak ones.

Also for the weak verb it must be learned how to form the past form from the verb root. However, the past tense of weak verbs follows an easily recognisable pattern.

There are four different endings for weak verbs (-et | -te | de | dde). These endings are always added to the stem or root of the verb. This root is found by dropping the unstressed -e on the end of the infinitive, if there is one.