Frisian verbs: ‘Ferlern… Ferlernsto or ferlearsto de wedstriid’?

This article was written in Frisian by Anne Merkuur for our members’ magazine ‘Ut de Smidte’ (Summer 2026).

It isn’t always easy to have such an unusual form at the ready when, in practice, you almost exclusively use the past participle ‘ferlern’. A quick chat with a few friends and colleagues clearly demonstrated this. And what did I find? Most of them simply avoid the past tense altogether. They play it safe (and stubbornly!) by sticking to ‘Ik ha ferlern’ ('I have lost') or ‘Do hast ferlern’ ('You have lost'). For them, any other verb tense seems to have become almost superfluous. In fact, they refuse to form it themselves.

But there was also a small group of people who did something rather unusual – strikingly, all of them were true-born Súdwesthoekers. They seem to say ‘ik ferlernde, do ferlerndest, wy ferlernden’ with ease. Forms that strike other speakers as odd, and are sometimes even regarded as incorrect. After all, anyone who has had lessons in Frisian has usually learnt: ‘hjoed ferlies ik, juster ferlear ik, foarige wike haw ik ferlern’. A classic irregular verb, with three different stems.

However, the (historical) Dictionary of the Frisian Language (WFT) also mentions a variant of this verb: the weak verb ‘ferlerne’ (to lose). This has its own regular paradigm: ‘hjoed ferlern ik’, ‘juster ferlernde ik’, ‘foarige wike haw ik ferlernd’ (‘today I lose’, ‘yesterday I lost’, ‘last week I have lost’). Such a weak paradigm is no longer mentioned in the latest dictionaries. But those last two forms in particular do clearly correspond to what we hear from our friends and colleagues in the Zuidwesthoek. After all, the Zuidwesthoek region is also famous for adding the weak -d after a past participle such as ‘ferlern’ (compare ‘sjoend’, ‘diend’ and ‘seind’ – ‘seen’, ‘done’ and ‘said’). Both ‘ferlende’ and ‘ferlernd’ are therefore not simply incorrect and do indeed have (or have had) a place in the language described.

At the same time, this does not seem to be an entirely satisfactory explanation. As far as we are aware, the present tense form ‘hjoed ferlern ik’ (‘today I lose’) is, in practice, rarely or never used (anymore), and we do not find it, for example, in the Fryske Akademy’s language database either. The friends and colleagues who effortlessly say ‘ferlernde’ simply use ‘ferlies ik’ (‘I lose’) in the present tense as well. So this weak paradigm does not seem to be complete there.

This brings us to two possible explanations. The first is that earlier grammarians may have been a little too quick to conclude that this is a completely weak verb. Based on a limited number of forms, such a conclusion can easily be drawn, whereas it may in fact be a mixed system, where there is simply an over-generalisation from the past participle to the past tense. The South-West Corner participle form has struck people as an ordinary regular form ending in -d (compare: ‘it hat reind’ – ‘it has rained’), as a result of which ‘ferlern’ was interpreted as the (past tense) stem, which is regularly conjugated in the past tense to: ‘ferlern-de’ (compare: ‘reinde’ – ‘rained’).

But it may, of course, also be the case that a completely weak, south-western paradigm did originally exist (‘ferlern, ferlernde, ferlernd’ – ‘lost, losing, losing’), but that the present tense stem ‘ferlies’ (‘loss’) has crept in from Standard Frisian. In that case, we are dealing with a form of language contact within a single linguistic area, where a standard form replaces a local variant. It certainly helps that ‘ferlies’ closely resembles the Dutch stem ‘verlies’.

It is not immediately clear which scenario applies here. What is striking, in any case, is that speakers deal with these forms in a very pragmatic and varied manner. The present participle ‘ferlern’ is dominant, so the past tense is often avoided, and those who do use it can choose from more than one option. On the small scale of a single verb, this offers a fascinating insight into how language works. And to put it in sporting terms: the final score is 1–0 to the irregular verb.