The first German word of the day is the verb:
sein
“Sein” , German for to be, is THE most irregular verb in the German language and yet it doesn’t come with as big a host of forms as its French equivalent.
The infinitive or, as I like to call it, “dictionary form” might be a bit confusing since it also means “his” but the context will make it clear most of the time.
The verb conjugates in present tense as follows:
(If you are unfamiliar with the pronouns yet… I will explain those soon and add a link here)
Ich bin schön.
Du bist schön.
Sie (er/es) ist schön.
Wir sind schön
Ihr seid schön.
Sie sind schön.
As it is irregular the past tense form seems to be rather random. Yet there are similarities to simple past form of “to be”
Ich war in London.
Du warst in London.
Sie (er/es) war in London.
Wir waren in London.
Ihr wart in London.
Sie waren in London.
The participle 2 of “sein” is gewesen and the spoken past is formed with sein itself.
The usage of “sein” is pretty much the same as for “to be” in English. Luckily German doesn’t have two distinct verbs for two different qualities of “to be” as for instance Spanish.
You will use this verb, very, very frequently as you need it for the casual past of some important verbs and for the passive voice. So learn it well :).
To wrap this up here is the famous Shakespeare-line in German:
- Sein oder Nichtsein, das ist hier die Frage.
Advanced learners might have noticed that the compound word Nichtsein is capitalized and hence a noun. This appears to be the most widespread translation of “to be, or not to be…”. However, it is not the most logical choice and not the closest translation either.
The literal translation of Nichtsein would be nonexistence.
Whereas in the original version, Hamlet ponders two different actions (to be or not to be) , in German he has to decide between two “things”.
I don’t know why this obvious shift has come to be the most agreed upon translation to date but I honestly have to disagree. I have heard the phrase numerous times and I would have written it as follows:
- Sein oder nicht sein, das ist hier die Frage.
This is pronounced exactly the same as the former version but it is closer to the English original because the pending choice is between two actions “sein” and “nicht sein”.
If you know the reason for the German translation you are welcome to leave a comment.
Anyway… I hope you enjoyed this very first word of the day and see you next time.
I am in Grundstufe A2 right now and want to continue onto B1. However after falling short for B1 in a placement test by 4 punkte…its time i pulled up my socks and started taking Deutsch seriously! :D And then i stumbled upon serendipitiously onto ur wonderful Blog..Thank you so much for all the work u put into this lovely blog. I appreciate it a lot! Vielen Dank!
Thanks a lot for your feedback and good luck with your German… German is hard in the beginning but at some point it starts to get easier and easier… this point, however is NOT B1, as it is considered the hardest level of all… anyway, don’t despair, you’ll do it, as long as you really want it, and if your course or your textbook makes your motivation disappear, get a new one… :)
I think that Hamlet means with that phrase the existence and so they translated it to Nichtsein!
that’s it? no jokes? no abstraction glasses? after meeting the blog so advanced stage I decided to see the first posts. again very nice blog, It’s speeding my german learning so much!
Hahahaha… yes, that was the beginning. I quickly got bored of just bare explanations though :D
I assume that you have deliberately missed to add Subjuntive forms of verb ‘sein’ here presumably to not to confuse the beginners. But i was hoping that someone like you could well explain those complex structures easily and not to bore away the readers.
This is one of the first verbs that i learned and it didn’t look hard to grab, until i encountered the Subjuntive mood of this.
Regards, Hunny
Actually, I didn’t even think of those forms when I was writing this :D… but yeah… conjugation tables are everywhere online and for a beginner those forms are nothing to worry about.
I do have plans for a mini series on “subjunctive/conditional” but I don’t know when I’ll do that so here’s a link to a very condensed version I did in my forum (yes, I toyed around with a forum once but it didn’t really work and I figured I’d rather focus on one thing :)
http://askaboutgerman.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/german-conditional-2-werden-sein-haben/
Hope that helps a bit :)
I frequently get mixed up between using sein and werden, given in english, they can be both “be” depending on “to be” and “to become”.
What would then be the difference in meaning between the two following sentences for “to be missing” according to Leo.dict?
1) using : als vermisst gemeldet sein “Er ist als vermisst gemeldet”
2) using : als vermisst gemeldet werden “Er wird als vermisst gemeldet”
I don’t understand the subtle difference in meaning… I understand that with werden, it is the passive, but I can’t recognise the subtle difference in meaning between the two sentences, and when one would use one over the other…
Vielen Dank im Voraus!
“werden” is the process, “sein” is the result. I’ll use a different example that is easier for me to translate :)
– bezahlt werden
– in the process of being payed
– bezahlt sein
– to be payed/the process has been completed.
That’s short but that’s pretty much it. For more, just check out the post on “werden”
Hope that helps :)
What do you mean when you refer to “participle 2”?
Danke!
In my course I call it the “ge-form”. It’s these forms:
gekauft, gemacht, gewesen
English has them, too, but there they often look exactly like the past tense.
Does that help?
Thank you very much for this great article about the German verbs haben and sein. It helped me a lot to understand hte basic principles. By the way.. I have a little suggestion.. why don’t you add graphics to you articles as on https://language-easy.org/german/grammar/verbs/to-have-in-german/ ? That would make the topic a bit more illustrative.. Thanks again and Greetings from Bolivia!