German Verbs And their Uses



Posted: Monday, October 15, 2007

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There are hundreds of verbs in German, but not all are used with the same frequency. Once you’ve learned how to conjugate German verbs, you must still understand how verbs function within complete sentences. That’s where Essential German Verb Skills comes in. Verbs, without any tense associated with them, are known as infinitive verbs. In English, to make a verb infinitive, we add "to" before the verb. In German, we can tell a verb is infinitive, by the -en or -e at the end of the word.

In order to conjugate German verbs, you first need to identify the stem of the verb. This is the part that won't change, no matter what sort of conjugation you apply. For example, the verb "machen" has a verb stem "mach". The verb changes depending on who it applies to.

In German verbs are categorized into three categories: weak verbs, strong, and mixed verbs.

Weak verbs do not change the stem vowel in the past tense and the past participle and they’re considered like regular verbs in English, examples: arbeiten (to work), spielen (to play).

Strong verbs do change the stem vowel in both the past tense and the past participle, examples: sprechen (to speak), fahren (to drive, go)

Mixed verbs contain parts of both weak and strong verbs. They’re used very often and therefore they should not be overlooked, examples: bringen (to bring), senden (to send)

In English, the modals include "should", "could" and "might". They differ from other verbs in several ways, e.g. they have no infinitive corresponding to "to play" (you don't say "to should"), and they have no -s form in the third person (you don't say "he shoulds"). German modals also differ from other verbs and correspond roughly, but not completely, to the English ones.

Many German verbs have prefixes, and there are two types. Inseparable prefixes remain with the rest of the verb at all times. Separable prefixes go to the end of the clause when the verb is finite (not an infinitive or past participle).

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