German Verb Conjugation — A Complete Guide

Deutsch Üben · free practice, no account needed

German verbs change their ending according to who is doing the action. English does this too, but barely — I work, you work, he works — where German changes the ending for almost every person. The endings are consistent enough that once you have the regular pattern, most verbs follow it.

The regular present tense

Take the infinitive, remove the -en, and add the ending. machen becomes the stem mach-:

When a spelling change is needed

If the stem already ends in -t, -d or a difficult consonant cluster, an -e- slips in to make the word pronounceable. arbeiten would give the unsayable arbeitst, so it becomes du arbeitest, er arbeitet, ihr arbeitet. The same applies to finden, reden, öffnen and rechnen.

If the stem ends in -s, -ß, -z or -x, the du ending loses its s, because you cannot hear two in a row: heißen gives du heißt, not heißst. tanzen gives du tanzt.

Stem-changing verbs

A group of common verbs change their stem vowel — but only in the du and er/sie/es forms. Everywhere else they behave normally, which is why the change is easy to miss.

These have to be learned individually — there is no way to predict from the infinitive whether a verb changes. The consolation is that they are among the most frequent verbs in the language, so exposure does most of the work.

The verbs that break every rule

Three verbs are irregular enough to be worth learning as complete paradigms on day one, because you cannot say much without them.

Separable verbs

Many German verbs carry a prefix that detaches in a main clause and moves to the end. aufstehen becomes ich stehe um sieben auf. The prefix is still part of the verb — it has simply travelled.

Common separable prefixes: ab-, an-, auf-, aus-, ein-, mit-, nach-, vor-, zu-, zurück-. Inseparable prefixes never move: be-, emp-, ent-, er-, ge-, ver-, zer-. Ich besuche dich keeps its prefix; ich rufe dich an does not.

The Präteritum

The simple past. In speech, German mostly uses the Perfekt instead, so you meet the Präteritum more in writing and narrative — with the important exception of sein, haben and the modal verbs, which use it constantly even in conversation.

Regular verbs insert -te- before the ending: ich machte, du machtest, er machte. Strong verbs change their vowel instead and take no ending in the ich and er forms: ich ging, du gingst, er ging.

Konjunktiv II

The would-form, used for politeness and hypotheticals. For most verbs it is built with würde plus the infinitive: ich würde gern kommen. A handful of high-frequency verbs have their own form and sound stilted with würde: wäre, hätte, könnte, müsste, möchte.

Ich hätte gern einen Kaffee is how you order politely. Könnten Sie mir helfen? is how you ask for help without sounding brusque. These two sentences alone repay learning the form.

Which tense at which level