Page:A simplified grammar of the Danish language.djvu/68

56 in the mother-tongue, as in the past part. elskader, and in the various modifications which marked the several persons in the singular and plural, they have either been changed, as elsket (past part.), or they have been set aside, and thus in modern Danish one termination, er or r, is being more and more exclusively applied to all persons of the present indicative.

A similar process of simplification is breaking down the distinctive differences of the imperfect indicative in the first and second conjugations of the weak verbs; and many verbs may be conjugated in accordance with either mode of conjugation, as at bröle, 'to bellow,' which may take either brölede or brölte in the imperfect of the indicative.

The strong mode of conjugation, also known as the irregular, includes generally only verbs derived from the Old Northern, with which its inflections have more affinity than those of the weak form. Its chief distinctive feature is that the imperf. indicative retains the monosyllabic root of the words, without taking any terminal additions such as mark this tense in weak verbs, although the radical vowel generally undergoes a change either in the imperfect alone, or both in the latter, and in the participle.

This strong form may therefore be classified under the following heads:

1. Verbs in which there is no change in the radical vowel; as, at græde, 'to weep;' græd, imperf. ind.; grædt, past part.

2. Verbs in which the radical vowel changes both in the