Hello everyone,
and welcome to a new episode of our practical guide series on German verbs. It’s been a while since we’ve had one of these, but now it’s time to bring out the AI again and use it to practice all the essential phrasings for one verb.
Because that’s the best way to learn, period!
And this time with one of the top three most important German verbs and the only one which is really irregular:
sein
Yup, the one and only :).
As usual, we’ll go over the most important phrasings and structures by building simple and more complex sentences and actually speaking them.
I have Stew, the speech recognition AI fired up, so warm up your mouth and when you’re ready, let’s jump right in :)
Many of you probably already know this, but let’s check out the system real quick.
How it works
I’ll give you a sentence in English and you’ll have to translate that and then SPEAK it and Karen will th… I mean the AI will then give you feedback on how well you did. You do as many takes as you want, but keep in mind that the goal of this is NOT that you get perfect pronunciation – that is something impossible to achieve without feedback from an actual trained native speaker.
The goal of this learning method is that you practice to quickly construct the most important types of sentences on the fly, so they come out easier in real life. And you’ll also unconsciously learn a whole bunch of grammar just from its rhythmical and sound aspects, like the verb final stuff or forms of reflexive pronouns and so on.
Not all in one lesson of course, but you’ll see.
Anyway, let’s give it a try.
Just hit the record button to start the recording and hit it again, to stop. Rest should be automatic.
Try and say this in German
- “eins zwei drei”
You can listen to your own recording with the little play button next to the sentence and you can also hear me say it at “my version”.
If something isn’t working, make sure you have your mic enabled in the browser. Leave me a comment if you have any issues.
But now let’s get started with sein – in the present tense.
sein – present tense
I think most of you know that sein is the German verb for to be. And it is the ONLY really irregular verb in German. And irregular is an understatement really, because it’s all over the place.
| ich (I) | bin (am) |
| du (you) | bist (are) |
| er, sie, es (he, she, it) | ist (is) |
| wir (we) | sind (are) |
| ihr (you all) | seid (are) |
| sie/Sie (they, You formal) | sind (are) |
What a mess.
I mean… to be isn’t exactly a beacon of consistency either, especially if we include the past forms was and were.
If you’re wondering why these two verbs have such a “variety” of forms – the reason is that what we’re looking at is actually a mixture of forms of several verbs. to be and ich bin for example come from one stem, ist, is and sein come from another and was and German war from a third. All verbs were about the same grand theme and people often used them interchangeably and slowly, over the centuries, a favorite “melange” emerged, which is what we have today.
There is no deeper logic why it is “I am” in English and ich bin in German.
So… these forms we really need to learn by heart, so let’s start right away :)
Here’s your first task (and yes, you can totally peek at the table):
My version:
And the plural
My version:
Cool.
And now let’s make our first few little sentences
My version:
***
My version:
and let’s also do the other persons.
Here’s one you can use on your next date.
My version:
And another one
My version:
By the way, one quick important note for the er, sie, es-form: in spoken German, people very often skip the final “t” so the form essentially becomes like English is. So you don’t really need to make an effort here, if it doesn’t roll of the tongue easily.
So, let’s try again, a bit longer this time.
My version:
Nice!
Now, let’s also do a couple in plural.
My version:
***
My version:
And now let’s move right over to some questions.
Questions
There are two types of questions – yes or no questions (Are you? Do you?…) and question word questions (Where are you?…) . Generally, there are some very big structural differences between German and English when it comes to how to structure questions, but we do NOT have to worry about any of these today, because for to be and sein, everything works exactly the same. So the structures are identical, you just need to use the right form.
- You are at the party.
Du bist bei der Party - Are you at the party?
Bist du bei der Party? - Why are you …
Warum bist du …
So… let’s give it a try right away
My version:
***
My version:
And let’s throw some question words into the mix
My version:
A really important phrase you need after a party…
My version:
And let’s try one that’s a bit longer…
My version:
Sweet!
Now, this is pretty simple and straightforward but there is big fat caveat – questions like these:
- Are you learning German?
- Why are you learning German?
These look just like the questions we just practiced but the actual verb here is NOT to be – it is to learn. To be is just a helper here, used to create the… er… something something (insert grammar jargon here).
German DOES NOT have this form and so ANY of these questions will NOT be translated with sein.
- Bist du lernen Deutsch?…. NOPE
This is absolute nonsense in German and it sounds so weird that people might not even understand what you’re trying to say.
I’m sure it’ll take a while for you to get used to this and
So… only use the verb sein if you’re really talking about someone being something or someone or somewhere.
You’ll definitely take a while to get used to, it’s normal to make mistakes. But whenever you catch yourself wanting to say something like this and you start with sein... stop and start over, because you cannot repair it :).
Better to create the structure in German and ignore all the helper verb shenanigans English does.
Anyway, so now that we have present tense and questions, let’s move on to the last big item … the past tense.
Past tense
German has two options for the normal past tense, the spoken past (which most verbs use in spoken German) and the written past (or preterit) and EVERY verb has both forms.
If you dig really deep, there are some slight differences in meaning here and there but in everyday life they express the same thing and the only difference is which one is idiomatic for a given verb.
Most verbs go with the spoken past in daily life (hence the name) while the written past is only used for written narrations, but SOME of the most common most important verbs use the written past also as their “standard” in spoken German.
Sein is one of those verbs and the forms have little (read:nothing) to do with present tense.
But not as big a mess as present tense, and most importantly, they’re fairly similar to English.
| ich (I) | war (was) |
| du (you) | warst (were) |
| er, sie, es (he, she, it) | war (was) |
| wir (we) | waren (were) |
| ihr (you all) | wart (were) |
| sie/Sie (they, You formal) | waren (were) |
As I said… technically, sein of course also has a spoken past version. Here’s how it looks
- ich bin gewesen…
- du bist gewesen…
- …
But you don’t really need this, because the written past is just more idiomatic.
So we’ll practice just that for now.
And note that you DON’T really have to pronounce the final “r” in German. It’ll sound much more natural if you skip it and just make the “a” longer.
Your brain, trying to be helpful, might make your tongue pronounce the “r” when it sees it, but try to really ignore that it’s there.
Write down the conjugation without it on a piece of paper, if that helps you… “Ich waa, du waast….”. Or just do a British accent :)
Seems silly to you but it’s much more natural than the American “r” or a rolled Italian “r” at the end.
So, let’s give it a try.
My version:
And the plural
My version:
And now let’s make a sentence
My version:
Pretty boring, so let’s add when I was there. And that’ll go BEFORE the location here. German and English are often reverse like that.
My version:
Another one… and again the time comes before what you actually “are”.
My version:
Now, in German, you can move things around a fair bit and it’s quite common to start a sentence like that with the time.
And because the verb wants to be the second element in German, so the subject moves behind it.
My version:
And let’s do another one.
My version:
Awesome. That was quite a long sentence already :)
Now let’s do a plural real quick.
My version:
***
My version:
And now let’s do a few questions.
My version:
***
My version:
***
My version:
***
My version:
Awesome!
So now we have a pretty good overview of the forms but before we wrap this up, we need to talk about two little structures that are VERY important if you want to speak idiomatic German.
So are you ready for a little more?
Then let’s go.
Bonus – Two useful structures
First up, let’s talk about statements like this:
- Hey, it’s me/I.
- Was that you?
- That’s us.
There’s this never ending debate in English about whether it is “me” or “I”. In German, it is definitely 100% “ich” (I), and there is no debate.
That’s not the important thing, though.
Because this:
- It is me/I.
Does NOT translate to this:
- Es ist ich…. WRONG
The reason is that German uses the actual entity (person) as the “lead” for the sentence. So in German you say
- Ich bin es.
which in spoken is often shortened to
- Ich bin’s.
This system actually applies to all kinds of phrasings like “It is something something”
- Es sind drei Kilometer nach Berlin.
- “It are three kilometer to Berlin.” (literally)
As you can see, German again considers the kilometers to be the subject and the verb gets the plural ending, whereas in English it’s singular.
But this is already a little too much for a beginners kit.
You’ll pick up this stuff over time, but what you can/should learn is how to say “It’s me” and the fitting question, so let’s give it a try :)
My version:
And the answer
My version:
All right.
So this was the first structure, and the second one is probably even more useful.
And that’s the structure you need to talk about a few basic “feelings”.
In English you say this:
- I am cold/warm/bored.
In German, however, you say
- To me (it) is cold/warm/boring.
Some might know this from their own mother tongue but to English native speakers it’s definitely unusual.
This phrasing involves the Dative case, so to use it “universally” we’d need to know that pretty well, and that’s too much for today.
But we will practice the two most important examples of the phrasing… talking about how your feelings, and asking someone about theirs. All you basically need is “Mir ist… ” and “Ist dir …?”. Nice way to get used to these two Dative forms :)
So… let’s give it a try.
My version:
And again a bit longer… and guess where the “kalt” goes ;)
My version:
Now let’s try a question
My version:
***
My version:
And now let’s try it in past tense
My version:
***
My version:
***
My version:
And that’s it for today :).
This was our practical tour through all the basic structures you need for the verb sein.
And remember.. the idea of this practice is not that you only do it once. The idea is that you do it a few times over the course of a few weeks, until the sentences come out without too much thinking and you can do the whole thing without reading the explanations.
As the proverb says:
“Repetition is the mother of Skill”
And another one, which I really like:
“We are what we do repeatedly, excellence is a habit.”
As always, if you have any questions about any of this, just leave me a comment.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
I’m so glad I found this website. Thanks to Emanuel and people that contributed extra to help out a friend, I’m forever grateful!
awkward grammar in the second paragraph above the Past Tense section:
“You’ll definitely take a while to get used to, it’s normal to make mistakes. But whenever you catch yourself as you want to say something like this and you start with sein... stop and start over, because you cannot repair it :).”
the “as you” part seems really superfluous and made me reread the sentence…better phrasing would be “But whenever you catch yourself WANTING to say something like this and you start with sein…….”
not sure if it’s technically grammatically incorrect (I’d wager that it is) but beyond being unnecessary it’s extremely awkward. thinking about it a bit more grammar-wise you’d just said “whenever you catch yourself…” you don’t need to add “as you” for a third time
anyways, relatively new reader here, love the blogs. been studying German for a few years now and absolutely love the depth you add to relatively “simple” topics
Fixed it, thank you :).
Doesn’t really matter if it’s grammatically correct or not… if it is weird enough to make people have to read it twice, then it needs to be changed.
I am forever grateful for this site and the people who have contributed to it! Vielen Dank!
My heart is now full of gratitude for Emanuel and all the people who contributed to this amazing, smart and unique website.and many thanks for all the member who paid extra just to help others in need ❤️❤️❤️
Quick corrections:
“It’s been a while *since* we’ve had one of these”
and then in the same paragraph, you said it’s time to “practice”, which should be “practise” because with a ‘c’ is the noun. But that is really fussy – many native speakers get that wrong tbh.
Do you have any more on depth on the “mir ist” and “es sind” structures? I know dative case etc but these two are ones I’ve never really understood
The “practice” versus “practise” distinction is surely a dead man walking. Indeed, in American English “practise” is already dead and buried, so it’s certainly not “wrong” for folk in the US to use “practice” for both. And from that you can pretty reliably guess what’s going to happen in the rest of the world (outside of certain holdouts such as parts of middle-to-upper-class Britain, and perhaps within certain more technical/legal documents.) Farewell, and godspeed, “practise”!
I thought “practice” was US spelling and “practise” was British and my English is more based on US than UK so I went with that.
How about a nice compromise.
Lots of fun at spelling bees.
Well… Who’s to say what’s wrong or right in terms of spelling.
I make the distinction because to my eye it looks wrong otherwise. I’m not a spelling/grammar nazi, but my real experience of it is I have to read the sentence over again because there’s a noun where a verb should be so I subconsciously do a mental double take.
I guess eventually I’ll get used to it though
Very good point about the possible confusion.
I did go to ngram now just to compare “I need to practice” and “I need to practise” and the former is like 8 times as common.
However, a week ago or so, I think it was you who made a really nice and convincing take-down for an ngram I posted as “evidence”, so yeah… totally open to get shut down again :D!
Haha that was me yeah ^^
In this case I can’t think of a “legit” reason to use “I need to practice” that would explain the ngram so I guess it is evidence this time…
I previously said it doesn’t really matter about whether you use c or s, but now I think about it, if you’re gonna pick only one, it should be “practise”, because “practising” is already a word, but “practicing” isn’t, and it makes really no sense at all to switch between c and s when switching tenses. That is just unnecessary confusion for learners.
Wait, all the dictionaries (leo, dict.cc, cambridge, pons,…) do list “practicing” as US spelling.
Otherwise, I would have yielded, because your argument does make sense… but only if it really isn’t a word :D
This has to be high on the list of US crimes against humanity. Stop the world – I wanna get off ^^
The one thing that came to my mind was this article:
https://yourdailygerman.com/common-mistake-using-mir/
But I think that’s all I have that’s focused on these structures.
What is it that you’re struggling with exactly?
If you tell me, I’ll try to clear it up. I always thought of these more as a “needs getting used to” thing.
I never seem to know when people are going to use es sind vs es gibt.
And with “mir ist…”… That’s a sentence without a subject which to me is just messed up ^^
“es gibt” vs “es sind” … yeah, that’s a quite common question actually. I think I’ll do an advent calendar post on this.
Without having given it much thought (testing), my spontaneous idea was that “es gibt” is used when you describe a location and “es sind” when you specify entities.
Does that make sense?
Wait what? Not even sure i’ve ever seen the the spelling “practise” ever before (!) Looks very weird to me to be honest (I grew up in the uk). I had no idea this was a thing. It’s quiet funny how learning about another language actually often is about learning about your own..
I learnt it at school. To help us remember, our English teacher told us with an ‘s’ is like “pract-eyes” so it’s the verb and with a ‘c’ is just “pract-iss” so it must be the noun, and I never got them muddled up again after that.
And now I realise if we pronounced the end of “practise” like we do “summarise”, “realise”, and “theorise” then the US would be spelling it “practize” so that ‘s’ really didn’t stand a chance ^^
Side note: why don’t the US write “exercize”?
Always love for a handy mnemonic…
The speech recognition doesn’t seem to work for me…It seems to hear me, ie. giving me a grade of 0%-6% for the simplest “Ich bin, du bist, er ist…” LOL. I used to get >80% earlier this year so I know my pronunciation is not that terrible. (I paused my membership for 5 months as have been busy with summer activities so not sure if there’s been any change to the system you use). I cannot click on the replay button to hear my recording, so not sure if it actually recorded anything…I’m using macOS Big Sur 11.6. And do have microphone enabled. Tried on the latest iOS on iPhone and iPad but the same issues.
Hi there, so a 6% score is virtually impossible unless you say something completely different, so that points toward a technical issue.
I think it might have something to do with an iOS update that got shipped this spring. Several people had issues after that came out.
Can you play the examples in “normal” posts on my site?
And also, can you do the speech exercise here:
https://speak.ef.com/go/theater/a-57vtde
It’s also one I have made, but it’s on their own website. If it doesn’t work there either, then there’s nothing I can do unfortunately because then it’s an apple problem.
Let me know please and sorry for the hassle.
Yes,I can do the speech exercise in the provided link…92% score.
I can play your recordings on almost all posts. Just not being able to replay mine…and the “match” grading is just off. 0% most of the time, sometimes it’ll get to 6% and as high as 9%. Lol. I’ve played around w adjusting the volume but no luck.
I think it’s a matter of how the browser encodes it, then. My audios are mp3, and marked as such, as are the recordings that you do, but Apple might record them as .ogg file or something like that.
Since it does work on the EF site, it’s definitely an issue I could potentially fix, but I can make no promises as I have access to zero Apple products to test anything with. I hate Apple.
Do you know how to access the develloper console by any chance?
I do.
Oh, that’s great. Could you send me the console output after recording and also after clicking play for your own recorded audio?
Screenshot would also be an option:
info@german-is-easy.com
That’d be the absolute chad move :D
Haha. I sent you a screenshot from my iMac. Do you need it from my iPad or iPhone as well, or once you fix the coding for iMac, it should fix the issue on all Apple products? (I mostly read and do my YourDailyGerman articles on my iPhone or iPad). Btw, you can count on me to be your Apple tester…I’m always curious about technology, keen to learn German, and have free time :-).
Awesome, thank you :) !! I’ll look into it next week, when I have a little more time.
This was super useful! Started out very simple but the last sentences are super hard for me… its good to try and internalize them :)
Hello Emanuel. I am having difficulty with the AI. I am not able to record my voice. Everything else on the system appears to work fine. I’ve checked the microphone and it works. I’ve also allowed the computer to use the microphone on the website. I am using Safari on an iMac with Mac OS Catalina. I tried the system using my iPhone 13 mini and I get the same result. Does the AI require the use of a plug in on the browser or website? Thanks
Sorry you’re having trouble!
So the system does NOT need any external plugins or anything and it has worked on Mac before, but it might be an issue with a recent update of iOS.
Could you tell me what exactly happens when you try to record? Can you hear a recording after? DO you get an error message?
And are you able to check the devellopper console (on iMac)? That would be the best actually :)
I can jump in here. I was having the same thing happen but I had already written too much and didn’t want to be ‘that guy’…
First, I had to switch to Chrome just to get it to work at all. What does that mean? The microphone will check out just fine in the system and all other apps. In the system prefs you can see a good level coming in. But once Safari allows the use of the microphone from this website, the input audio goes dead. No input from the mic. Even going back to the system preferences to see the ‘raw input’ will no longer show any input.
In Chrome, it will take the microphone input. Thus, you can get a score from the AI. However, switch back to and from YOUR recorded examples and recording in the AI leads to “veerrrrry tiiiiimmmmme stretcccchhhhhed” (very time stretched) sample rate issues. It will stutter the first time you switch from recording (my input) back to playback (your recorded examples).
Pressing play on your examples a second time will usually do something (clear the buffer?) that fixes it and I can hear your examples again. Sometimes it will play back, but will completely skip the first 1/2 second of the audio.
It is almost like the AI is using its own ‘thing’ to handle/process the audio, and the hand-off back to the normal system playback is getting messed up.
I might be able to record it and send you that audio if you would like.
Safari = no go. Chrome works but has hiccups.
Did you get Chrome to work on iPad / iPhone by any chance? While Emanuel tries to figure out the issue, the workaround for me is Chrome on iMac, it seems to work flawlessly, but I can’t get Chrome to work on any of the iOS devices. What bothers me is everything used to work well on all Apple devices late last year and even earlier this Spring.
Hi Chad – on iPad, using Chrome, I can get his demo audio to play – however it is unusually soft (quiet). No audio is recorded (scores are 0-6%) and no playback of my recording. Similar to what happens on Safari in MacOS. I have a laptop with an older OS on it. Going to give that a shot to test Emmanuel’s new OS theory.
Ok – I have an older laptop with Catalina (10.15.1) on it and the results are:
No dice at all with Safari. Pressing record doesn’t even give me the glowing button.
(Note that the audio system is just fine – I recorded into Logic with the internal mics and the level was right up to full scale)
However… Chrome works spot on. Recording flawless. The AI recognizes my flawless German pronunciation and awarded me as such, and the playback of the Emmanuel audio had no hiccups afterwards. Thus flawless all the way around.
Changing the “User Agent” in Safari didn’t help when I told it to pretend it was Chrome.
Wow, this is getting really complex! Thanks a lot for all these data points.
What I found the most confusing was the apparent crossover effect between two browsers that you described and the super slow playback.
I have literally no clue what could be going on there.
Could you also say “War es dir sehr kalt?”
Yes, that also works, but without it is more common and more idiomatic.
Dies machte Mir viel spaß.
Super, das freut mich.
Hello,
Let there sein some typos:
practice all the essential phrasing (practice all the essential phrasings)
by making and simple and more complex sentences (by building (more idiomatic) simple and more complex sentences – surplus “and”)
people often used the interchangeably (people often used them interchangeably)
role of the tongue (roll off the tongue)
let’s move right over transition to some questions (either “move right over” or “transition”)
when it comes how to structure questions (when it comes to how to structure questions
straightforward and cannot – just one word
shananigans (shenanigans)
overview over the forms (overview of the forms)
It are three kilometer to Berlin (It’s three kilometers till Berlin)
“It is I” is the phrase a grouchy grammarian would deem correct. However, in real life, it sounds so stilted that they even made fun of it in the series ‘Allo, ‘Allo. Any normal person says “It’s me”
If we should scratch hübsch from our vocab, what would be more idiomatic for pretty or beautiful? schön?
Danke wie immer :)
Quick question:
Is “can not” wrong or is it just unusual?
As for “pretty” and “beautiful”… yes, “schön” is 100% the perfect choice there :)
can not is just unusual
Cool, I really enjoy these challenges. As per usual, I spent about 15 minutes lamenting my appalling pronunciation of certain words, concocting the most elaborate theories as to what I might be doing wrong, only to have “der prosaischsten(*) Geistesblitz aller Zeit”. Yep, you probably guessed it, I just needed to get closer to the microphone on my computer. Anyway, let me just recommend this once again to anyone becoming disheartened by their scores!
A couple of more specific observations on what I really *was* doing poorly, but not noticing until now:
(*) OK, that might be the ugliest word I’ve ever managed to vomit in German, and I don’t think the poor old AI would have a colour suitable for how badly I’d mangle its pronunciation ;-)
Haha, yes, “prosaischsten” ist wirklich schlimm. Für mich auch.
Nice hint for “müde”… it really does have something of the cow sound to it. And yes, many English speakers tend to pronounce the “sehr” a wee bit too “high” and with not enough shift in quality.
I for one have a very pronounced “ee-aa” in it, but that’s partially because Berlin dialect overpronounces long vowels a bit anyway.
Have you tried putting “prosaischste into the AI? I have and I nailed it first try :D
I just tried the dreaded “prosaischsten” and managed to cajole the beast into delivering me an 89%. Sadly, playing back even that attempt was still somewhat cringe-inducing, and I won’t mention the scores on the myriad other attempts! Purging that beast from my vocabulary is a work-in-progress…
I’d say 80% of the people I know don’t know it and I only do because a theater teacher of mine used it frequently to describe offers we made in practice.
I have never used it myself. I prefer “banal”.
Oh and it always sounds shitty, no matter how well it’s pronounced. It’s just not meant to have these adjective endings.
“prosaischstes” is even worse.
I had the same problem with sehr it seems – thanks to your tip my score with this word improved
Danke. I appreciate going back to basics from time to time. If nothing else, being able to say “yep, I knew that” is good – when 8 months ago that wasn’t the case. But I always learn something no matter the level.
Yeah, this moment of “I actually know that.” is really important.
I was in a workshop once (about play-fighting) and the teacher there said that to be a good training partner you have to make the difficulty so that the other person gets 70%.
If they get more it’s not enough of a challenge, if they get less, they get frustrated.
So for instance, in an exercise, there should be a few “easy” questions, not dumb, but easy. If it’s all challenge, then it’s tiring.
Anyway… glad you enjoyed this and I’m happy to hear that you have some takeaways even from more advanced posts, even if it’s just a good time :).
Hallo lieber Emmanuel,
Es gibt ein Klein typo in der Tabelle der Vergangenheit þ . Es war ( it was, not is ) .
Viele Grüße von Paris .
Oh, danke dir :)!! Liebe Grüße zurück nach Paris!
Interesting, for “cute” my first instinct was “hübsch”. Would you say “süß” is more idiomatic?
Oh, you can totally scratch “hübsch” from your active vocabulary. To me, it’s an old style word, like a grandma looking at her granddaughter’s new dress. I never use it.
“cute” is definitely “süß” in contexts like this.
Könnte man “niedlich” sagen? Irgendwie habe ich das Wort vor Langem als die Übersetzung von “cute” gelernt…
Ja, das geht. Das klingt ein bisschen “bunny”-mäßiger. Wie ein kleiner Baby-Hase.
Und was ist mit “entzückend”? Hat das eine ähnliche Bedeutung?
Ja, aber es ist auch ein bisschen mehr wie “delightful, enchanting”. Und es klingt ein bisschen wie eine ältere Dame. Ich verwende es nie.
Danke, Emanuel!
Das hat mir viel spaß gemacht, auch war sehr informativ! Müde konnte ich nie 100% schaffen obwohl süss konnte ich schon. Ich weiss nicht warum, aber ü nach m schient irgendwie schwieriger auszulauten
Hmm, interessant mit dem “mü”. Vielleicht kommst du nach “m” ein bisschen via “i”. Ein bisschen wie in English “mule”. Ich glaube English hat nicht so viele Wörter mit einer “siu” Sound-Folge, deshalb klappt es da besser.
Ich habe etwas entdeckt! meine Schwierigkeit war nicht mit der ersten Silbe, sondern der zweiten! Ich habe das “e” zu kurz gemacht