Hello everyone,
and welcome to our German Word of the Day. The first ever word of the day, actually. And so we’ll look at the most basic verb there is:
sein
Sein is German for to be. It’s ALSO the German word for his, but that’s really just one of many… uhm… funny coincidences the German language has in store for beginners.
Anyway, sein is the most irregular verb in the German language. Actually, it’s the ONLY really irregular verb in German, because German conjugation is quite chill. But yeah…. sein is classic LBH-material (Learn-By-Heart).
Here it is in present tense:
Ich bin schön.
Du bist schön.
Sie (er/es) ist schön.
Wir sind schön
Ihr seid schön.
Sie sind schön.
And here it is in past tense:
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.
As you can see, the forms are pretty “wild” but you might also have noticed some parallels to English. The “bin” low key resembles “to be” and the past “war” kinda sorta looks like “was/were”.
The reason WHY to be and sein have such a patchwork of forms is the Germanic tribes actually literally puzzled together parts of three distinct roots – we could call them the b-root (be, been, bin, bist), the es-root (am, is, ist, sind…) and the was-root (war, was…). Of course the tribes didn’t do that on purpose. These things just kind of evolved over centuries.
One branch is used for past, another one for present. And sometimes, two forms were used in parallel before the people finally settled on one. In Middle English for instance there were forms like I be, thou beest which look a lot like German but they just weren’t as popular as am and are. So yeah, both languages, German and English kind of “recruited” their forms the same pool, but they didn’t recruit the same forms. Hence the differences we see today.
By the way… to be is not the only patchwork verb like that. Another nice example is to go. The past form is went, which doesn’t look ANYTHING like to go. And that’s simply because it actually comes from to wind. People just ended up using it as the past for to go.
But anyway… these relations are of course nothing you need to remember. I just wanted to mention it because the verbs to be and sein with their forms really are kind of strange.
But learning by heart is the name of the game for this one. But it won’t take long because of course you’ll need this verb very, very frequently. And in German, you actually even need it for the spoken past quite a bit.
And speaking of past… the ge-form (past participle) of sein is gewesen (a distant relative of “was”) and the spoken past is done with … sein :)
- Ich bin gewesen.
- I have been.
And if you’re now like “Wait, what’s spoken past, what’s ge-form and why does have translate to bein?” then I’ll recommend you the grammar course… here’s the link to the first episode.
German Grammar Essentials – Part 1 – Personal Pronouns
You’ll also find lots more examples for sein there and practice the forms.
But if you REALLY want to get a feel for the verb, I recommend my super interactive speaking exercise with AI speech recognition. Yes, I am not joking, actually.
In the exercise, we’ll practice all important phrasings and structures and conjugations for sein by creating and speaking real sentences. So check it out… it’s really really helpful:
Using “sein” – the ultimate guide
To wrap this up here is the famous Shakespeare-line in German:
- Sein oder Nichtsein, das ist hier die Frage.
- Practice pronunciation – click once to start recording and again to stop
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.
*nerd-mode off
Anyway… I hope you enjoyed this very first word of the day and see you next time.
Oh… here’s a little quiz, by the way :)
Brother i was 5 when you posted this, what the hell
Me too. I started really early.
That has to be the greatest response i’ve ever seen
I was expecting something like ‘you made me look old’ or some sh
I have a B.A. in 4Chan-ology. Just a minor, but still very useful stuff.
And you already knew German back then? Damn i’m slow
Hi Emanuel –
Sorry for the basic question….just getting the hang of the language. I was sort of under the impression that the nominative followed the helping verb sein:
Ich bin ein hungriger Mensch
But then I came across this sentence:
Ich bin diesen Freitag beschäftigt
I am probably missing a major grammar point somewhere….thanks for bailing me out.
Danke
Just a little hickup :)
The nominative is used when the “sein” assigns the right side to the left side, and the right side is a “thing” or “person” (a noun).
The second example, the “sein” assigns an adjective “busy”
“diesen Freitag” is just an additional piece of time information.
German sentence structure is such that it happens to come right after “sein”, but its NOT to be equated with “ich”.
It is Accusative, because that’s just a fixed rule for these kinds of time indications and has nothing to do with the verb.
Hope that helps :)
Regarding little involuntary diaphragm noises…
As with many words, there are generally-accepted US and UK spellings. The US one is probably used most because it’s not completely stupid:
“hiccup”
So you were pretty close.
The UK way is yet another example of pointlessly confusing English spelling:
“hiccough”
I *think* it’s the only word we have where the ‘ough’ is pronounced as “up”, so it’s kind of special in that way. But I could be wrong, maybe there’s a word I’m forgetting.
“hiccough”, ey?!
Could that be a contraction of… “high cough”??!?!
Hold on, a native speaker of British English just told me he spells “hiccup” this way, and that “hiccough” was a different thing.
I didn’t give him context before so it’s a “neutral” assessment of his reality. Is that a regional thing then?
It’s more likely that he only knows the US spelling. Hiccough is the official UK way and is pronounced hiccup, butas you can imagine there isn’t time at school to learn the sitting of every single word. It’s common to see it written down but never make the connection between what’s written and what’s pronounced. I also thought ‘hiccough’ was pronounced “hiccoff” and was a different thing than hiccup for a long time, because frankly who on earth would see that word and think it’s pronounced “hiccup”.
I’m usually very protective over British spelling, and rarely use US spelling but in this case their word is just plain better.
Here’s a fun video about it: https://youtu.be/JkdcYYduUeM
You’re right about high cough, although it seems it was an etymological blunder from some smart ass scholar
*to learn the spelling
I think Hiccup was the original in both English forms. Hiccough was called a mere error by the Oxford English Dictionary in the 17th century (I think) and it was an error because it sounds like a cough.
Interesting!! Actually “hiccup” as a word sounds like it could even be an onomatopoeia of the sound. In German, to imitate it, you’d say “hicksen”, which is fairly similar.
Like… the English is basically “hick” and “up” because it’s some upward momentum.
Hi there! Could you explain (either here or somewhere else) the construction “Es ist” in the sense of using sein with “es” first to make it more of a statement? For example, it seems to me that you could say “Pizza ist übrig,” but you could also say “Es ist Pizza übrig,” but is there a reason you’d use one over another? Another question that’s coming to mind as I type this is if you could also substitute “Es gibt” here.
You could also do this with werden in the sense of “Es werden 3 Schüler die Prüfung schreiben” or “3 Schüler werden die Prüfung schreiben.” Similarly, “Es sind 3 Schüler im Unterricht” instead of “3 Schüler sind im Unterricht.” Do you know what the difference is here?
Actually I have an article about pretty much that :). My article about “es”:
https://yourdailygerman.com/meaning-es-ist-german/
In it, I go over the various ways to use it and what the differences are, so you’ll find most answers there.
Let me know anything that’s still unclear after :)
Oh great, thank you! I think I just looked in the wrong article then. I appreciate it!
Servus! Ich habe in der Zeitung “sei” und “seien” gesehen und kann den Unterschied nicht verstehen.
Ich habe diesen Artikel gefunden: https://dschule.de/seien-oder-sein/ aber er ist auf Deutsch und super verwirrend.
Beispiele:
“sei” ist Konditional 1 im Singular, “seien” ist Plural.
– Die Menschen seien enttäuscht, so der Politiker.
– Er sei von den Menschen enttäuscht, so der Philosoph.
Perhaps someone has already asked this question? Why is the Hamlet quote not translated as “Zu sein oder nicht zu sein?” Am I perhaps misunderstanding the use of the preposition “zu?” Please help.
No, it’s a legitimate question!! For an English speaker it would make total sense for it to be “zu sein”.
The thing is, the English “to be” in the quote is the pure infinitive, while a “zu”-construct is an infinitive with a certain function attached.
The pure infinitive in German is just “sein”.
Hope that helps :)
I’ve been enjoying your posts for a while, then I though ‘why not start from the beginning?’ so here I am with ‘sein’. Great stuff, thanks.
One point, my information is that ‘went’ is the past of ‘wend’ (not ‘wind’). https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2016/06/went.html
Wend is still used very occasionally, often in the phrase ‘to wend ones weary way’
That makes perfect sense. I’m a native speaker but never ever connected wend and went together, and honestly I think if someone asked me the past simple of wend I would have said “wended”, and indeed now I think about it more I’m sure I’m not the only one who would use wended as I’m sure I’ve heard or read it before.
Totally possible. German has a plenty of verbs that had a stem change a few hundred years ago, but are now regular. Nothing is ever fixed, not even grammar :)
Yes!! Isn’t it great! :DD
Danke, Emmanuel, Sie sind der einzigartigste Deutschlehrer, den ich je gesehen habe. Wäre ich früher hier gewesen, würde mein Deutsch bisher bestimmt makellos :) Danke sehr
Danke für das Kompliment!! Eine kleine Korrektur:
– würde mein Deutsch jetzt makellos sein.
oder noch besser:
– wäre mein Deutsch jetzt makellos.
It find it interesting that said tribes decided to use Sein which implies existence to also use it to imply masculine possession or was it the other way around? :) also ihr to indicate female is possessions is weird imo
That’s a coincidence, though. The words used to be different and they just ended up being spelled the same (and sounding the same).
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!
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?
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 :)
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 :)
https://askaboutgerman.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/german-conditional-2-werden-sein-haben/
Hope that helps a bit :)
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 think that Hamlet means with that phrase the existence and so they translated it to Nichtsein!
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… :)