strong masculine nouns, three groups of strong feminine nouns and one group of strong neuter nouns can be identified. Below is an overview of the noun declension system: The noun declension system Vowel stems (strong declension) a-stems a-stems ja-stems ia-stems ō-stems ō-stems jō-stems iō-stems i-stems u-stems Consonant n-stems (weak declension) n-stems an-stems ōn, ūn-stems īn-stems Consonant stems monosyllabic stems r-stems nd-stems Some noun paradigms of the words (fish), (son), (bed), (ship), (bit) and (week): In Late Old Swedish By the year 1500 the number of cases in Old Swedish had been reduced from four (nominative, genitive, dative and accusative) to two (nominative and genitive). The dative case, however, lived on in a few dialects well into the 20th century. Other major changes include the loss of a separate inflectional system for masculine and feminine nouns, pronouns and adjectives in the course of the 15th century, leaving only two genders in the standard Swedish language, although three genders are still common in many of the dialects. The old dative forms of the personal pronouns became the object forms (honom, henne, dem; him, her, them) and -s became more common as the ending for the genitive singular. Adjectives Adjectives and certain numerals were inflected according to the gender and case the noun they modified was in. Below is a table of the inflection of weak adjectives. Verbs Verbs in Old Swedish were conjugated according to person and number. There were four weak verb conjugations and six groups of strong verbs. The difference between weak and strong verbs is in the way the past tense (preterite) is formed: strong verbs form it with a vowel shift in the root of the verb, while weak verbs form it with a dental suffix (þ, d or t). Strong verbs The verbs in the table below are (bite), (offer), (become), (steal), (measure) and (go). Weak verbs Weak verbs are grouped into four classes: First conjugation: verbs ending in , in the present tense. Most verbs belong to this class. Second conjugation: verbs ending in , in the present tense. Third conjugation: verbs ending in , in the present tense. Fourth conjugation: these verbs have a more or less irregular conjugation. About twenty verbs belong to this class. Inside the conjugation classes the weak verbs are also categorised into further three classes: I: those ending in in the preterite II: those ending in in the preterite III: