My Coming Book – Sample Chapter

Inseparable Prefix Verbs

Inseparable prefixes are what we see in most European languages and we could call them “normal” prefixes. Because they behave how you’d expect them to behave.
You take a prefix, stick it to the beginning of a verb and then that’s where it is – no matter whether the verb is in a dictionary, in a sentence, in past tense or completely drunk in a bar at 2 am on a Monday.

Here’s an example in English with the prefix under-.

• to understand
• I understand that.
• I’m trying to understand that.
• I have understood that.

And here’s the same example in German with the prefix ver-

• verstehen
• Ich verstehe das.
• Ich versuche, das zu verstehen.
• Ich habe das verstanden.

Why is it ver-in German but under- in English? And what the heck does this have to do with stehen and to stand?
Well, that’s a rabbit hole I don’t want to look into now, but it’s a great showcase for just how abstract these prefix verbs can be.
What matters for us is that the prefixes (under- and ver-) just stay where they are. Which sounds like nothing special, but in German it is, because as we’ll see later, the separable prefixes do not stay where they are. Like… at all.

And there’s something else that’s special about German inseparable prefixes, at least compared to other German verbs:

They don‘t need a ge-.

If you‘re familiar with the German past tense, you probably know what I mean by that, but let‘s take a second to go over it together.

Past Participle – To ge- or not to ge-

In many languages, there’s a verb form that in English is called past participle. Not all languages have that form, but most European languages do and it’s actually super useful because you can usually do a variety of things with it, including talking about what happened in the past.

• I’ve learned/learnt German.
• I’ve seen the movie.
• I’ve said that.

learned/learnt, seen and said are past participles here.
In English, the past participle often looks the same as the simple past form (I learned, I said), but in most languages, the form is more distinct.
And in German, the form’s sort of iconic feature is the ge- at the start.

• Ich habe Deutsch gelernt.
• Ich habe den Film gesehen.
• Ich habe das gesagt.

Actually, if you take off the these German forms are not looking so different from their English brothers anymore.

But anyway, the thing with inseparable prefix verbs is that they do NOT get this ge-.

stehen (to stand)
Ich stehe
Ich habe gestanden.

verstehen (to understand)
Ich verstehe.
Ich habe verstanden.

The reason for that is that the ge-actually used to be a normal inseparable prefix just like ver-or zer- or be-. In fact, you can still see it in verbs like gewinnen (to win) or gewöhnen (to get used to) or in nouns like das Gebirge (the mountain range).

Its original idea was a sense of “result” and people would use it if they wanted to shift the focus of a verb to the fact that the action was completed.
And little by little, Germans started using the ge- kind of habitually whenever they were just talking about what they’d got done during the day. Or in other words, when they were talking about the past tense.
And over time, the meaning of the prefix faded and it slowly changed into its final form – grammar.

But it was never added to verbs that already had an inseparable prefix. In the beginning, that was because people wouldn’t just “stack” two such prefixes on one verb. The purpose of the prefix was to give a sense of direction, after all, and why would you want to add two different kinds.

And even later, after ge- had completed its metamorphosis into grammar, people felt no urge to add it to inseparable prefix verbs.
Because the “urge” to add it with normal verbs was not “meaning”. No German can tell you what ge- “means”.
The real reason, or one of the big ones anyway, that makes native speakers learn and use the ge- when they’re a child is in fact: rhythm.

You see, the ge- adds a little unstressed syllable before the main emphasis of the verb.

• ESS-en – ge-gESS-en
• KAUF-en – ge-KAUF-t
• SEH-en – ge-SEH-en

A bit like a pickup note in music. Like tadahhh instead of just dahhhhh.

And guess what else is an unstressed syllable? Exactly, other inseparable prefixes.

STEH-en : ge-STAND-en
verSTEH- en : ver-STAND-en

verstehen doesn’t get a ge- for its past participle, because it already has the specific rhythm that the ge- creates.

This of course applies to all German inseparable prefixes, but it in fact also goes for all those verbs that are of Latin origin.
Like addieren, operieren or manifestieren.
And the reason is once again rhythm. The main stress for these verbs in German is the second to last syllable. The -ier-part.
And the syllables before it are all unstressed in comparison.
So in other words, they too have that specific flow built in of having a little onset before the main syllable. And thus they don’t get a ge- either.

fotografieren – fotografiert

It’s not gefotografiert or fotogegrafiert or whatever. There is no need for the ge- here because the ge-rhythm pattern is already there.

Now you might be wondering what would happen if the inseparable prefix was in fact stressed.
Well, inseparable prefixes are generally unstressed but there is one exception that can actually answer this “what if?”: the verb antworten.

Ant- is inseparable and yet, it’s stressed, so it does carry the main emphasis of the word.

Ich ANTworte.
(I ANswer)

And here’s how the past participle looks:

Ich habe geANTwortet.

Tadah! We do have a ge- now, and the reason is simply that the form would not have the right rhythm without it.

Now, this was a lot of information but the good news is that you don’t really have to remember it. Or at least you don’t need it for the rest of this book. I just thought it’s interesting.

The two main takeaways are: inseparable prefix verbs don’t get a ge- for their past participle form. And they stay in one piece.
Both of these things would be kind of a “So what?” … if they weren’t completely different for the separable prefix verbs.

But before we get to those, let‘s actually take a little detour and talk about a simple concept you‘ve probably never heard of that is the key to a lot of questions about German sentence structure.

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