Grammar
The Danish past tense
Published 1 October 2026
arbejde [ˈarˌbajdə] "work" becomes arbejdede "worked", and bruge [ˈbruːə] "use" becomes brugte "used". Both verbs are regular, and they still take different endings. Regular Danish verbs make the past with -ede or -te, and no rule picks the right one every time. A few clues get you most of the way, and one shortcut hands you the perfect tense for free.
The numbers
-ede is the bigger group, until you look at the common verbs
We counted the 302 verbs the app teaches. 145 take -ede, 71 take -te, and 86 do something else entirely. Those last ones are the irregular verbs, and they have a page of their own.
So -ede looks like the safe guess. But among the 100 most common verbs, 33 take -te and only 27 take -ede. The verbs you use every day lean the other way, which is why -te past forms will feel more familiar in your first months than the overall count suggests.
Present tense won't help you choose. It is -er for both groups (arbejder, bruger), as the list of common Danish verbs shows for all hundred.
Clues that work
Three signs that a verb takes -ede
It ends in -ere
Verbs borrowed from other languages, the ones ending in -ere, take -ede. In our list it is 14 out of 14, no exceptions: fungerede "worked, functioned", accepterede "accepted", inviterede "invited".
It is short and ends in a vowel
The regular one-syllable verbs like bo [boː] "live" and tro [troːˀ] "believe" add -ede straight on: boede, troede. Watch out: most short verbs ending in -å (gå, stå, få) are irregular instead.
It is new to the language
When Danish borrows a verb today, it goes into the -ede group: google becomes googlede. If you invent a verb by accident, give it -ede and it will at least sound like Danish.
Textbooks also offer a rule about consonants: two consonants at the end of the stem mean -ede. We tested it against our verb list and it did barely better than guessing -ede every time, so we would not lean on it.
The shortcut
Learn the past and you get the perfect
The two endings carry through to the form you use with har ("has"):
| Past ends in | Perfect ends in | Example | In our list |
|---|---|---|---|
| -ede | -et | arbejdede, har arbejdet | 141 of 145 |
| -te | -t | brugte, har brugt | 67 of 71 |
So for a regular verb there is really only one thing to memorise, which group it belongs to. Learn købte "bought" and har købt "has bought" comes with it.
Whether the perfect takes har or er is a separate question, with its own answer: har or er in the Danish perfect tense.
Try it
Five verbs, thirty seconds
Say the past tense of each, using the clues above where they apply.
- invitere "invite"
- bo "live"
- lave "make"
- købe "buy"
- spise "eat"
Answers: inviterede (the -ere rule), boede (short, ends in a vowel), lavede (the default), købte and spiste. The last two no clue would have given you. Those you learn with the verb, which is exactly what the app's verb cards are for. Learn verbs with all their forms
Learn each verb with its past
Every verb in the app shows its present, past and perfect, in the order Danish uses them.