German verbs and present tense
In the previous sections, the declension and case concepts (nominative, accusative, and dative, genitive) were explained. The case is very important for the German verbs as well. While some German verbs act in the accusative, others act in the nominative etc. Most of the German verbs are accusative, which are then followed by dative verbs.
Infinitive form
Most German verbs end in –“en” in the infinitive form, for example: geben (to give). And the others end in “-n”, for example: sein (to be).
As in English, some German verbs are regular while some others are irregular. Let’s see first how to conjugate a regular verb in present tense:
Present tense conjugation
To conjugate a regular verb in present tense, drop the infinitive ending “–en” and add the endings in accordance with the subject pronoun.
Ich -e
Du -st
Er/sie/es -t
Wir -en
Ihr -t
sie/Sie –en
Let’s conjugate the verb “gehen”:
Ich gehe
Du gehst
Er/sie/es geht
Wir gehen
Ihr geht
Sie/Sie gehen
Note that the conjugations of singular and plural third person are equal to the infinitive of the verb. Moreover, er, sie, es and ihr are conjugated the same, i.e. “-t” is added.
Another thing you should take notice of is the following. If a verb ends in “-s, -ß,-z”, after dropping the infinitive ending, the “du” form takes only “–t”. For example: reisen (to travel). Drop the infinitive ending to get the stem of the verb: “reis-“. To say “you travel”, you need to say “du reist”, not du reisst. As stated above, the same holds if the verb ends in “-ß,-z” as well. Moreover, if the stem of the verb ends in “-t, -d”, “-e” is added to the “t”conjugated versions. For example, let’s take the verb arbeiten (to work). Drop the ending “-en” to get the stem of the verb: “arbeit-“. For the “du” form it will be arbeitest not arbeitst. Also, the form for the er/sie/es/ihr will be modified: arbeitet not arbeitt.
Two of the most important irregular German verbs are “sein” and “haben”. They can be both used as auxiliary verbs, as we’ll see in the lessons related to other tenses. These irregular verbs are conjugated as follows in present tense:
Sein in present tense
Ich bin
Du bist
Er/sie/es ist
Wir sind
Ihr seid
sie/Sie sind
Haben in present tense
Ich habe
Du hast
Er/sie/es hat
Wir haben
Ihr habt
sie/Sie haben
In case of some German verbs, only the stem changes, whereby the endings stay as explained above. For these verbs, second and third person singular (du, er/sie/es) undergo a stem-change. An example of such verbs is fahren (to go, to drive) and its conjugation is as follows
Ich fahre
Du fährst
Er/sie/es fährt
Wir fahren
Ihr fährt
sie/Sie fahren
Separable Verbs
As you can learn more about them in the related lesson, some German verbs which are formed by some prefixes are called as separable verbs. The conjugation of such verbs are simple, they are just as explained above. You just need to separate the prefix and the base verb; the prefix must come after the base verb. An example is anfangen (to start). This verb is a stem-changing verb, therefore its conjugation will be like “fahren” which was mentioned above:
Ich fänge an
Du fängst an
Er/sie/es fängt an
Wir fangen an
Ihr fängt an
sie/Sie fangen an
Use of present tense
What is interesting about the present tense in German is the fact that it can reflect three times actually:
- Present tense (as in English, for general statements)
- Present continuous
- Future tense
The difference in the tempus is made clear by using adverbs. For example;
Ich gehe ins Kino jeden Donnerstag (I go to the gym every Thursday): in this sentence, the present tense is used to make a statement about a general habit.
but
Ich gehe ins Kino am Donnerstag (I’ll go to the cinema on Thursday): in this sentence, the present tense is used to talk about a future plan.
Ich gehe gerade ins Kino, Ich melde mich spaeter an (I’m going to the cinema now, I’ll contact you later on): in this sentence, future tense is used to talk about what you are doing at the moment.
As you see, by using words like “jeden Donnerstag”, “am Donnerstag”, “gerade” etc. it’s possible to explain what you actually mean.
Vocabulary
Examples of stem-changing verbs
Laufen: to walk
Lesen: to read
Geben: to give
Fahren: to go (by car)
Nehmen: to take
Sehen: to see
Schlafen: to sleep
Sprechen: to speak