German Present Tense – Regular Verbs

Hello everyone,

and welcome to the second part of the YourDailyGerman – Online German Course.

Last time, we learned the German personal pronouns as a building block for our first sentences in German.
Today, we’ll meet the other half: the verb.

The verb is arguably the most important thing in a German sentence. You can learn noun gender and cases all you want, if you don’t know how to properly use verbs in German, you’ll sound horrible.

Using verbs should be the main focus for beginners, so we’ll spend quite some time with it.

And today, we’ll start with

Basic German Conjugation

And because I shouldn’t throw grammar terms around and just assume everyone knows what I mean, here’s a super quick primer.

What is Conjugation

Conjugation is basically the verb putting on different looks to express or match different contexts.
In some languages, the verbs have dozens and dozens of different looks. Like, a dress specifically for “I” and “past tense conditional”.
Other languages like Chinese have virtually NO conjugation. So the verb always looks the same and the information about past tense for example is carried by some extra words.

English verbs are leaning toward minimalism, so they have comparatively few looks.

• I go
• he goes
• I went
• I’m gone

And the rest is done by adding helper verbs. Like for instance this:

• I will go
• I would go
• He would go

French would have three separate verb forms for these. Yeah… not fûn.

German is more like English. It has a bit more distinct endings, but it’s overall pretty simple, as you’ll see today

German Conjugation – Basic Endings

There’s one pattern that works for 99.99% of all verbs and a slightly different one that you need for like 10 verbs or so and for the past tense later on.

Today, we’ll learn the “normal pattern”.
That means it’s time to meet our first verb in German.
And what better could there be than

lieben – to love

This is the so called infinitive, the form you find in a dictionary.
This form always ends with -en in German. Well…  sometimes with -ern or -eln. But mostly with -en.
When we take the ending away, what we’re left with is called the stem.

And to conjugate we now add the respective endings to that stem.
Let’s just take a short sentence like “I love coffee”  and do this for the personal pronouns we learned last time, so we see all the endings in action.

• Ich liebe Kaffee.
  Du liebst  Kaffee.
  Sie liebt   Kaffee.
  Er  liebt  Kaffee.
  Es  liebt  Kaffee.
  Wir  lieben Kaffee.
  Ihr  liebt Kaffee.
  Sie  lieben Kaffee.
• ▶

Not too difficult right?
Here are the endings isolated.

Not as simple as English, where you literally just have to add an “s” for third person singular, but not too bad either.

Now, there are of course some finer points to talk about but before we do that, I’d say it’s your tun to do some basic conjugating :).

***

***

Sweet.
Now, let’s look at the finer points.

German Conjugation – Things to Note

The first thing I want to point out is something you might have noticed yourself – the dictionary form (the infinitive) and the form for we and they are identical.

• lernen (to lern
• wir lernen
• sie lernen

So you kind of don’t really have to “learn” these as endings. Just learn the ones that are different.

Then, next, I want to say something about the du-form 

 s is the decisive letter for the du-form.

This letter is the primary thing that makes it sound and feel like the du-form so you need to pronounce that properly, even if it’s difficult.
For some verbs, it’s not hard.

• du liebst
• du lernst

But let’s take the verb klatschen which means to applaud, to clap and conjugate it:

• Ich klatsch-e.
  Du klatsch-st.
  Er klatsch-t.
• ▶

The du-form klatschst has one tiny vowel (a) followed by 6 consonants (tschst) and that’s definitely tricky to pronounce if you’re not used to it.
But whatever you do, DO NOT SKIP THE S. You may skip the t but never the s because the s is what makes it the right dress for du.

This also means that you should NEVER put an s if the person is NOT du.
People sometimes add an s to third person because they’re used to it from English.

• She learns German.

But in German, this would sound really really wrong.

• Sie lernst Deutsch.

The s is actual so dominant that this sentence would sound like “du” more than “she”.
The s is like THE marker of the du-form so make sure to put some effort into getting that right.

Now, this actually brings us to the next thing I want to point out: what happens if the verb stem ends in s.
Don’t the du-form and the he-form or she-form sound the same then?
Well, let’s take küssen as an example which means to kiss.

• Ich küss –e. 
  Du küss –t.
  Er küss –t.
  
• ▶

As you can see, the second and third person forms are indeed the same now. And German doesn’t add an extra third s for the du-form.

All right.
Are you up for one more little side note?
Cool! That’s the spirit.

So we’ll meet another verb, warten, which is to wait.

What’s “special” about this one is that the stem ends with a t. So if we were to just add the endings we learned, for the du-form we’d have “du wart-st” and for third person we’d get “er/sie/es wart-t”.

These SUCK to pronounce though, so German has decided to insert a little e here to smooth things outs

• Ich wart – e.
  Du wart-e-st. 
  Er wart-e-t.
  
• ▶

This is really just a small practical adjustment. I would not think of it as a rule or even as an exception.
We’ll get to those in a minute, but first, it’s your turn again.
Time to check if you paid attension with a little quiz :).
Only four questions… shouldn’t be too hard.

Cool.
So, now we know the basics of conjugation.  Well, almost. because there’s a bunch of verbs that need additional treatment… a so called vowel shift.

German Verbs with vowel shift

As you progress in German, you’ll find that changing the stem vowel is actually an essential part of German. It’s a feature of Germanic languages in general and English has it, too. Just think of teach and taught.
And in German, we have a bunch of verbs that actually have a slight vowel shift even in the normal present tense conjugation. More specifically

For many (NOT ALL) verbs with “a” or “e” at the stem,
the vowel gets lifted “upward” one step for the du-form and the er/sie/es-form. 

What do I mean by lifted upward? Well, “a” is changing to “ä”, and “e” changes to “i” or “ie” respectively, and those sound “higher”.
Let’s look at one example for each.

schlafen – to sleep

• ich   schlafe.
• du     schläfst
• er/ sie/ es  schläft
• wir schlafen
  …
• ▶

geben – to give

• ich gebe.
• du  gibst.
• er/sie/es gibt.
• wir geben
• ..
• ▶

Note that the lifting only affects du and er/sie/es and it only happens to verb with “a” or “e” and NOT all of them. And you can’t really tell from looks.
You kind of need to know the verb to know its character… fallen (to fall) changes, knallen (to bang) does not; sehen (to see) changes, gehen (to go) does not. I could give you a list now, but I think it makes more sense to not give this too much weight. Just pick it up as you go along. And if you forget a shift, people will absolutely still understand you. It just sounds quite clumsy.
Cool.
So now we really know all the basics for German verb conjugation and we can talk about the verbs that have prefixes.
But before we do that, we’ll do another little test. And read carefully… some questions are a bit tricky :)

Your new best friend: German Prefix Verbs

People always talk about German genders and cases, but I think a far more important feature of German is actually: prefix verbs.  A base verb like gehen, combined with a little syllable like auf forms a new verb aufgehen. And the meaning of that new verb may or may not have something to do with the parts it is made from.
German has A LOT of those.
Just take a look at how many versions there are for the basic verb gehen (to go):

angehen, aufgehen, untergehen, hintergehen, nachgehen,
übergehen, ausgehen, vorgehen, eingehen, mitgehen,
vergehen, begehen, entgehen, zergehen, durchgehen,
weggehen,…

That’s actually not all of them, believe it or not.
And as if that wasn’t confusing enough, most of those verbs mean two or three different things at once.
Usually, with some mind yoga, we can deduce a concept all the meanings have in common but at first sight they are different.
I think they’re really important and largely ignored by usual courses and textbooks, so you can find a LOT on German prefix verbs on this blog. I got you covered :).

But today we’ll focus on how to use them in present tense. Because there’s a bit of a… surprise there.
As far as the base verb goes, you just conjugate that normally. The prefix doesn’t affect the endings and changes in any way.
So aufmachen (to open) will get the exact same endings and changes as machen by itself.

The problem is with the prefix itself.
There are two kinds of prefix verbs in German.
One group is separable, the other group non-separable.
And actually, there’s a third group, a mixed group, but we’ll ignore that for now.

Separable Prefix Verbs – Present Tense

Separable prefix verbs have a weak link between the prefix and the base verb. That means that they are one word, one unit in the dictionary, but the connection is fragile. And as soon as you “touch it” because you want to use it, it breaks and have two separate parts – the base verb and the prefix.
And you’ll have to pay for breaking it. Not with money but with nerves because the prefix actually goes to the end of the phrase.
And that’s actually not a weird exceptional behavior of the prefix. Rather, it’s one of the most fundamental rules about German verbs.

Whenever your action/verbal phrase consists of more than one word,
one part is in the “normal” position, the rest lines up AT THE END.

Actually, as we progress, we’ll see that this is one of the fundamental characteristics of the German language as a whole, that’ll help us heaps with word order and negation and so on and I’d loooove to tell you about it right now, but it’s a bit much for the start.
For now, it is enough if you remember to put the prefix at the end of the phrase.
Example-time!
The verb aufstehen means to get up and it’s separable. So the link between prefix and base verb is weak. So as soon as you touch it, you will be left with the parts auf and stehen and the plain conjugation will be as follows.

• Ich stehe auf.
• Du stehst auf.
• …
• ▶

Now, it looks a bit as if I had only inversed the order of things but let’s see what happens when we add some more information into the sentence. The information about when I get up: morgen um halb 7 (tomorrow at half past 6).

• Ich stehe morgen um halb 7 auf.
• Du stehst morgen um halb 7 auf.
• ▶

It is NOT

• Ich stehe auf morgen um halb 7… WRONG

Our additional information comes BEFORE the auf. Auf  is at the very end.
This concept is crucial. In German, you often have to wait till the very end to know what’s actually going on.
Like… let’s take the verbs aufmachen and zumachen, which mean to open and to close.

• Ich mache die Küchentür ___ .

The sentence is almost over and you don’t know whether I close the door or open it.
This is a challenge when listening and reading, because you have to “keep an open mind” until the end of the phrase. And of course it’s a challenge for speaking, because you have to remember that little prefix and add it to the end, or your sentence will sound really incomplete.

It’ll take a while to get used to this, but one thing that can help us is to understand that it’s to some extent a question of rhythm.
We start the sentence, then talk, talk, talk and then we end with a very distinct and emphasized auf or zu or whatever prefix it may be.

• Ich mache gleich das Fenster in der Küche auf.
• I will open the window in the kitchen in a second.
• ▶
  
• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

• Ich mache gleich das Fenster in der Küche zu.
• I will close the window in the kitchen in a second.
• ▶
  
• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

The prefix at the end is a focal point. It’s “ich mache blah blah blah blah” and then “BAM”. There comes the prefix.
It sounds like of silly, but you can train it by just saying “lalalala BAM”. Feel the flow of that, the rhythm. That’s kind of what German is like.
Of course it will take training to do all this but you will get there eventually.
Cool.
So now we’ve seen how to use separable verbs in a sentence, and it’s time for another little quiz :)

And now let’s move on to the last topic for today. The other big group of prefix verbs – the non-separable ones.

Inseparable Prefix Verbs – Present Tense

Non-separable prefix verbs are much easier to handle because the link between the prefix and the base verb is strong and doesn’t break. And they’re actually nothing new, because we have non-separable prefix verbs in English. To understand for example, which is a combination of under and stand. And by the way… it’s also a good example for how random prefix verbs can be. I mean… why the heck does understand not just mean standing under something?
We’ll do a lot of this mind yoga as we learn more and more prefix verbs. But for now let’s focus on the grammar.
The prefix doesn’t get separated from the verb, but it also doesn’t have an effect on the conjugation. And let’s take the German version of understand as an example.. verstehen.
And the conjugation is totally regular.

• Ich verstehe Deutsch. (I understand German.)
• Du verstehst Deutsch.
• ….
• ▶

And just to make sure… it is NOT

• Ich stehe Deutsch ver…. WRONG

So non-separable verbs are really easy to handle and you don’t have to worry about moving the prefix to the end.

And now the big question a lot of you have is of course how to know which verbs are separable and which aren’t.
Well, basically all the weakly linked prefixes have a meaning themselves while (for the most part) the strongly linked ones mean nothing. But as a beginner you of course don’t know many words yet, so here are the important non-separable prefixes. It’s luckily just a few…

ver, ent, zer, be, ge, er, miss

so it might be a good approach to just learn those by heart. I mean it… learn them by heart.
As you can see, except for miss they all have just e as a vowel. The weakly linked ones have all kinds of other vowels. Like… mit, vor, nach, bei, zu, aus. So that’s an extra help.
Unfortunately, there’s this weird third group I mentioned.  It’s not many, but some prefixes  like über, unter, um or hinter can go either way. Sometimes they split, sometimes they stick… and they can do both with the same base verb, creating two completely different meanings.

•  Ich stelle mich unter.
• I take shelter.
• ▶
  
• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

• Ich unterstelle dir, mein Bier genommen zu haben.
• I accuse you of having taken my beer.
• ▶
  
• Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop

  

Ugh…. German in all its beauty.
Compared to the total number of prefix verbs in German (which is insanely high), those are just a few though, and you shouldn’t be worried about them too much.

One last thing before we wrap up though.
Actually, there’s not just a grammatical difference between separable and non-separable prefixes. There is also a difference in how you say them.
A weakly linked prefix will always carry a strong stress. In aufstehen for instance (do you remember what it means… we had it in the quiz ;)?) the auf-part gets a strong emphasis while the stehen is quite slurred in daily speech. In the non-separable verstehen on the other hand, the ver gets NO emphasis. The steh carries all of it.

• AUFstehen
• verSTEHen

It’s quite a different flow, so try to really feel that and get used to it. It’ll be quite helpful later on as we talk about past tense.

And thus we have reached the end of the first part on the German verb. I know it was a lot but here are the key points that you should take with you:

• the verb endings
• sometimes, we’ll make little adjustments to help pronunciation (example: du wartest instead of du wartst)
• Some verbs with a or e get a vowel shift toward ä or i(e) respectively. You just have to learn which ones.
• German has a group of prefix verbs, where the prefix is only weakly linked to the base verb. This prefix splits off and goes to the end when we use the verb in a sentence.
• Most prefixes are separable. The ones that are always inseparable are ver, be, ent, er,ge, zer and miss

In the second part, we will talk about the very few irregular verbs in German, namely to be to have, the modal verbs and a few others.
So if you’re up for more, you can hop over right away :)

German irregular verbs

And of course if you have questions or suggestions just leave me a comment. I hope you liked it and see you next time.