respect to these last-mentioned words, less confirmatory; Mœso-Gothic, svara, báira; Old High German, sverju, piru.
3. That the ea in tread was originally long; Anglo-Saxon, tredan, trede, trǽd, treden.
4. Lie.—Here the sound is diphthongal, having grown out of the Anglo-Saxon forms licgan, lǽg, legen.
5. Sat.—The original præterite was long. This we collect from the spelling sate, and from the Anglo-Saxon sǽt.
Ninth Class.
[§ 372]. A, as in fate, is changed either into the o in note, or the oo in book. Here it should be noticed that, unlike break and swear, &c., there is no tendency to sound the a of the present as ee, neither is there, as was the case with clove and spoke, any tendency to secondary forms in a. A partial reason for this lies in the original nature of the vowel. The original vowel in speak was e. If this was the é fermé of the French, it was a sound from which the a in fate and the ee in feet might equally have been evolved. The vowel sound of the verbs of the present class was that of a for the present and that of ó for the præterite forms; as wace, wóc, grafe, gróf. Now of these two sounds it may be said that the a has no tendency to become the ee in feet, and that the ó has no tendency to become the a in fate.
The sounds that are evolved from the accentuated ó, are the o in note and the oo in book.
| Present. | Præterite. |
| Awake | Awoke. |
| Wake | Woke. |
| Lade | [[50]]Lode. |
| Grave | [[50]]Grove. |
| Take | Took. |
| Shake | Shook. |
| Forsake | Forsook. |
| Shape | [[50]]Shope. |
Tenth Class.
[§ 373]. Containing the single word strike, struck, stricken. It is only in the Middle High German, the Middle Dutch, the New High German, the Modern Dutch, and the English, that