{"id":880,"date":"2010-05-11T19:50:26","date_gmt":"2010-05-11T18:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/?p=880"},"modified":"2013-05-23T15:33:59","modified_gmt":"2013-05-23T14:33:59","slug":"how-german-verbs-work-in-the-present-tense-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/880\/how-german-verbs-work-in-the-present-tense-part-1","title":{"rendered":"German Weak Verbs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/verb-construction1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-886\" title=\"verb-construction\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/verb-construction1.jpg\" alt=\"German Verb Construction\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/verb-construction1.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/verb-construction1-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Verbs in German are very structured and often follow fairly straight forward rules. Knowing these rules can really help when forming a sentence and knowing which form of the verb you need to use.<\/p>\n<p>All German verbs are made up of 2 parts, the stem and the ending. The stem is the unique and main part of the verb. The ending is&#8230;well&#8230;the ending. The most common ending is <strong>-en <\/strong>but can also just be <strong>-n.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s look at a few verbs to illustrate this:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> <strong>Machen <\/strong>(to make)<strong> \u2013 Mach <\/strong>(stem) \u2013 <strong>en <\/strong>(ending)<\/li>\n<li> <strong>Spielen <\/strong>(to play)<strong> \u2013 Spiel <\/strong>(stem) \u2013 <strong>en <\/strong>(ending)<\/li>\n<li> <strong>Segeln <\/strong>(to sail) \u2013 <strong>Segel <\/strong>(stem) \u2013 <strong>n <\/strong>(ending)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Once you are familiar with the stem\/ending rule, you are good to move onto the different verb forms. There are 7 main pronouns in German:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> <strong>ich <\/strong>(I)<\/li>\n<li> <strong>du <\/strong>(you \u2013 singular\/informal)<\/li>\n<li> <strong>er\/sie\/es <\/strong>(he\/she\/it)<\/li>\n<li> <strong>wir <\/strong>(we)<\/li>\n<li> <strong>ihr <\/strong>(you \u2013 plural\/informal)<\/li>\n<li> <strong>sie <\/strong>(they)<\/li>\n<li> <strong>Sie <\/strong>(you \u2013 singular and plural\/formal)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With each of these pronouns, the <strong>ending<\/strong> of the verb is replaced by the appropriate new ending for the sentence.<\/p>\n<p>The endings you use for each pronoun are as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> ich \u2013 <strong>e<\/strong><\/li>\n<li> du \u2013 <strong>st<\/strong><\/li>\n<li> er\/sie\/es \u2013 <strong>t<\/strong><\/li>\n<li> wir \u2013 <strong>en<\/strong><\/li>\n<li> ihr \u2013 <strong>t<\/strong><\/li>\n<li> sie \u2013 <strong>en<\/strong><\/li>\n<li> Sie \u2013 <strong>en<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We can now try this out with a full verb table.<\/p>\n<table class=\"grammar-table\">\n<tbody>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<strong><\/p>\n<td><strong>Pronoun<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>Stem<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>Ending<\/strong><\/td>\n<td><strong>Completed form<\/strong><\/td>\n<p><\/strong><br \/>\n<\/tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td>ich<\/td>\n<td>mach<\/td>\n<td>e<\/td>\n<td>mache<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td>du<\/td>\n<td>mach<\/td>\n<td>st<\/td>\n<td>machst<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td>er\/sie\/es<\/td>\n<td>mach<\/td>\n<td>t<\/td>\n<td>macht<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td>wir<\/td>\n<td>mach<\/td>\n<td>en<\/td>\n<td>machen<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td>ihr<\/td>\n<td>mach<\/td>\n<td>t<\/td>\n<td>macht<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td>sie<\/td>\n<td>mach<\/td>\n<td>en<\/td>\n<td>machen<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr valign=\"top\">\n<td>Sie<\/td>\n<td>mach<\/td>\n<td>en<\/td>\n<td>machen<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>This form is the basis of verb construction across the whole German language. Knowing this basic rule will help you with verb construction.<\/p>\n<p>In most cases, the stem of the verb does not change. However there are some cases where it does. This is the difference between <strong>weak verbs<\/strong> and strong verbs. The strong verbs are covered in our blog <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/924\/how-german-verbs-work-in-the-present-tense-part-2\">German Strong Verbs<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Verbs in German are very structured and often follow fairly straight forward rules. Knowing these rules can really help when forming a sentence and knowing which form of the verb you need to use. All German verbs are made up of 2 parts, the stem and the ending. The stem is the unique and main [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15961,"href":"https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions\/15961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jabbalab.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}