and always spelled because of the third phase of the High German consonant shift (d->t).

In Low German, the dental ending of the preterite tense was originally or , according to the stem of the verb. However the ending has fallen out in pronunciation, starting in the 17th century when the preterite was written with the ending -er representing the sound , which was already the last remnant of the former -de and -te endings of Middle Low German.