In the Germanic languages, a strong verb is a verb that marks its past tense by means of changes to the stem vowel. A minority of verbs in any Germanic In the Germanic languages, a strong verb is a verb that marks its past tense by means of changes to the stem vowel. A minority of verbs in any Germanic language are strong; the majority are weak verbs, which form the past tense by means of a dental suffix. In modern English, strong verbs include sing (present I sing, past I sang, past participle I have sung) and drive (present I drive, past I drov eat ate eaten give gave given lie lay lain see saw seen sit sat sat (archaic sitten) Class 5 verbs in Modern English: bid (in the sense of "to command" or "to invite"), eat, forbid, give, lie (= lie down), see, sit. The verb quethe is only used poetically now. Get, speak, tread, and weave, which come from Class 5 verbs, are now Class 4. The verb forbid comes from a Class 2 verb in Old English, as did bid in the sense of "to offer, proclaim", but forbid is conflated with the other verb bid ("to command"). The preterite can be forbad or forbade, or even forbid. The preterite ate is pronounced "et" in some British dialects; historically the form eat, homophonous with the present stem was also found for the preterite. Although the verb to be is suppletive and highly irregular, its past follows the pattern of a class 5 strong verb, with grammatischer Wechsel (the alternation of "s" and "r" in "was" versus "were"), and has uniquely retained the singular/plural distinction of both ablaut grade and consonant in the modern languages. Old English: wæs/wǣron, English: was/were. For full paradigms and historical explanations see Indo-European copula. Class 6 Class 6 has disintegrated as well. The verbs shake, take and forsake come closest to the original vowel sequence. The consonant anomaly in stand is still visible, and is extended to the participle. Inherited strong roots: bergen, delven, gelden, kerven, melken, schelden, smelten, vechten, vlechten, zwelgen, zwellen, zwelten (archaic). Three verbs of another class have joined with 3b: treffen, trekken (both class 5), zwemmen (class 3a). Historically weak: schenden, schenken, zenden; These verbs… The j-presents heben, schwören have taken an o in the preterite and participle, perhaps by analogy with class 2: heben hob gehoben. The verb schwören has changed e to ö. The past tense and participle of stehen (stand, older stund, gestanden), which derive from a lost verb *standen, also belong to this class. With a strong participle only: mahlen The root fragen acquired a rarely used strong inflection beside the historically weak forms. Class 7 In class 7, the various past tense vowels have merged into a single uniform -ie-.