You may be asking yourself are verbs that important? Do I really need to know the conjugation of my latest verb? Yes you do! Verbs are vital components of language. Every sentence needs a verb and you won't be able to build sentences without them. They allow you to communicate and the more verbs you know, the more expressive you can be.
In the present tense there are both regular and irregular verbs in German. For regular verbs it is important to find the verb stem. You do this by taking the infinitive and minusing the -(e)n. After that you add the personal endings which are: -e, -(e)st, -(e)t, -en, -(e)t, -en.Most German verbs end in -en. Regular verbs whose stems end in -ln or -rn only drop the -n before adding personal endings: wandern, handeln. With these verbs, the -en personal ending drops the -e: wir fordern, Sie regeln. Regular verbs whose stems ends in -d, -t, or -m or -n following another consonant add an additional -e before a -t or -st ending:
finden~du findest arbeiten~du arbeitest zeichnen~es zeichnet Verbs whose stems end in -s, -ss, -ß, -x, or -z drop the -s in the "du" form -st personal ending: heißen~du heißt reizen~du reizt All German verbs are regular in the plural forms of the present tense except for sein. That is all for regular verbs. I will break the irregular verbs in German into three categories: stem-changing verbs, modal verbs and others. I'll start with stem-changing verbs. They are conjugated similarly to regular verbs, except there is a stem change in the "du" and "er, sie, es, man" forms in the present tense. Unlike regular verbs, stem-changing verbs whose stems end in -d or -t do not add an additional -e- before an -st ending: laden~er lädt raten~du rätst
Unlike regular verbs, stem-changing verbs whose stems end in -d or -t do not add an additional -et ending in the "er, sie, es, man" form. raten~er rät halten~es hält Like regular verbs, stem-changing verbs whose stems end in -s, -ß, or -z drop the -s- in the du-form -st personal ending: lesen~du liest
essen~du isst
lassen~ du lässt
There are 2 stem-changing verbs with that do not follow any of the above patterns: stoßen to bump ich stoße, du stößt, er stößt, wir stoßen, ihr stoßt, sie stoßen. erlöschen to go out (of light, fire) commonly used only in the "er, sie, es, man" form: erlischt Moving onto the modal verbs. The German language has 6 modal verbs. These verbs can be grouped together not only because they are used in the same way but also because their formation is similar. The "ich" form and "er, sie, es, man" forms of the modal verbs all lack personal endings ie. they are simply the root of the verb. The plural forms of the modal verbs are all regular. There are 4 irregular verbs in the present tense in German that do not fit into any of the above categories: sein, haben, werden, and wissen. These are commonly used verbs, so their forms should be memorized. The verb haben is irregular only in the "du" and "er, sie, es, man" forms, where the "b" of the verb stem is removed.
The verb werden is a stem-changing verb. In addition, the verb removes the personal ending -t in the "er, sie, es, man" form. The conjugation of wissen follows a pattern similar to that of the modal verbs. In addition, the "du" form adds only a -t personal ending since the verb stem ends in ß. With the single exception of the verb sein, all German verbs are regular in the plural form conjugations. Any irregularities occur in the singular forms.
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