Strong Pattern: i – a – u (dricka, finna)

The i – a – u class is the most famous strong pattern in all the Germanic languages — it is the sing/sang/sung family — and it is the one where the supine genuinely surprises you. The infinitive has i, the past changes to a, and the supine moves to a third vowel, u (occasionally written o): dricka → drack → druckit. Three different grades, with the u appearing in neither of the first two forms. This is precisely the trap from the overview page made concrete, and it is also where the English cognate rescues you, because English keeps the same three-way split: drink/drank/drunk. This page drills the class, lists the common members with cognates, and hammers the one error everyone makes.

The shape: i → a → u

Watch the vowel travel through all three principal parts. The past is a bare one-syllable stem with a; the supine adds -it to a stem with u:

The present keeps the infinitive i: dricker, finner, binder, vinner, springer, brinner. Only the past goes to a, and only the supine goes to u.

The English participle gives you the supine

Here is why this class, despite its three-way vowel split, is learnable. English preserved the u in the past participle of the same verbs: drunk, sprung, sung — and even where modern English collapsed the past and participle (found, bound, won), the Swedish u-supine is still cued by the spelling (funnit, bundit, vunnit; compare the u in English under-forms and the old participle bounden). So the move is:

• For the past, the Swedish vowel is a, matching English drank, sprang, sang.
• For the supine, the Swedish vowel is u, matching English drunk, sprung, sung.

If you can keep drink/drank/drunk straight in English, you can keep dricka/drack/druckit straight in Swedish — they are the same verb with shifted spelling.

sjunga: the same family, with an ö past

A close cousin of this class is the set whose past has ö rather than a: most notably sjunga ("sing"). Its infinitive already has u (not i), so strictly it isn't i–a–u, but it shares the same supine u and belongs to the same Germanic family. The triple is sjunga – sjöng – sjungit (u – ö – u), exactly parallel to English sing/sang/sung in meaning and in the u-supine. A few others pattern with it (bjuda → bjöd → bjudit, "invite/offer"; sjunka → sjönk → sjunkit, "sink").

The supine vowel is a back vowel — for this class, always u

The supine vowel in the i–a–u class is reliably u: druckit, funnit, bundit, vunnit, sprungit, brunnit, spruckit, hunnit. There is no member of this class whose supine you would spell with o, so once you know a verb belongs here, the supine vowel is settled.

It is worth knowing the broader picture, though, because dictionaries lump several strong classes together. In the neighbouring ö-past group (the bjuda / sjunka / sjunga type from the previous section), the supine is still a back vowel and still spelled u (bjudit, sjunkit, sjungit). The honest takeaway is the reverse of a worry: across this whole back-vowel family the supine is overwhelmingly u, so the one vowel you must fight to produce — over the past a or ö — is simply u. When a verb genuinely sits in a different class, read its listed principal parts rather than guessing.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• i – a – u: infinitive i, past a, supine u
  • -it — dricka/drack/druckit, finna/fann/funnit, binda/band/bundit, vinna/vann/vunnit, springa/sprang/sprungit, brinna/brann/brunnit.
• This is the iconic sing/sang/sung Germanic class; the English participle's u (drunk, sprung) gives you the Swedish supine vowel directly.
• The present keeps i (dricker, vinner); the supine is the one with the third vowel u — and reusing the past a (har drack) is the defining mistake.
• sjunga – sjöng – sjungit and friends (sjunka/sjönk/sjunkit, bjuda/bjöd/bjudit) sit in the same family with an ö past but the same u/back-vowel supine.
• For every verb in this class the supine vowel is u (druckit, funnit, bundit, vunnit, sprungit); the back-vowel u is the one form to fight for, over the past a or ö.