![]() With the exception of subjunctive, English also uses these same moods. So, these are the three layers of information you need to know before searching for the right verb. When you look at a conjugation table for a verb, you’ll notice that all of the different persons are grouped by tense, and all of the tenses are grouped by mood. Mood is layered on top of both tense and person, meaning that after deciding when something happened and who was responsible for it, you can also express how the subject felt about it or what their intention was. Mood allows an additional layer of information to be packed into these mighty little words – talk about action-packed! (By this evening, I will have done my homework.)Ĭoming from English, this tense makes a lot of sense, as it’s almost a literal translation, just in a different order. ![]() (*By this evening, will I my homework done have.) It often uses even the same combinations of auxiliary (“helping”) verbs, like “have” in tenses like “have eaten,” and modal verbs equivalent to “would” in combinations like “would have eaten.” Therefore, selecting the correct tense will often feel familiar and sometimes even allow you to make a “one-to-one” match with the English counterpart.įor example, take a look at the future perfect tense, which may sound complex at first glance:īis heute Abend werde ich meine Hausaufgaben gemacht haben. German has many of the same tenses as English does. ![]() Person (Singular) Present tense Past tense First person I walk I walked Second person You walk You walked Third person He/She walks He/She walked In English, most verbs only change in the third person singular (see below). German Subject Pronouns Person English German first person singular I ich second person singular you (familiar) du third person singular he, she, it er, sie, es first person plural we wir second person plural you all (plural) ihr second person formal you/you all (formal) Sie third person plural they sieīefore you get too tense about tenses being a foreign concept, notice that English verbs also change depending on when the action occurs. German also allows you to express respect or formality by using the formal and capitalized version of “you” – Sie – when speaking to someone (or a group) older than you or in a higher social position. German uses one extra person category ( ihr) that corresponds to addressing “you all / you guys” in English. This mirrors the conjugation of the English verb “to be,” with forms as lacking in similarities as “was,” “is,” and “are.” Person (Who?) In other cases, the entire conjugation schema is irregular, as with the verb sein (“to be”). In some cases, only one letter changes irregularly, as in this common pattern in stem-changing irregular verbs: Ihr werdet – you (plural/informal) become. Notice the change in the stem of werden (“to become,” “shall,” “will”) from “e” → “i”: One notable example is werden conjugation. Strong verbs in German are almost entirely irregular, meaning that they don’t follow a tidy pattern. Weak verbs follow predictable conjugation patterns. Whether it’s a strong, weak, or mixed verb is something that needs to be memorized along with the translation of the verb, similar to memorizing the gender of nouns. Unfortunately, in the infinitive form there is no indication if it’s a strong, weak, or mixed verb. The infinitive of all German verbs ends in - en or - n. Luckily, 90% of verbs in German are regular. Weak verbs are all regular in German, which means that once you’ve learned the endings (suffixes), you can apply them to the radical of the verb without memorizing all of the conjugation tables. In the case of strong verbs, the vowel sound shifts, often within the stem. With weak verbs, consonant sounds shift, often in the form of suffixes (endings) added onto the stem. English also has these two patterns of changes in a verb. This naming convention refers to what changes about the verb. German verbs can further be categorized as either “strong” or “weak” verbs. In their most basic form, the infinitive, all German verbs are composed of the “radical” (sometimes called the “stem”) and the ending -en or -n. Rather than helping you express when something happened, mood allows a speaker to express their attitude toward a subject. Verbs can also change according to categorizations called “ moods,” which are similar to tenses. The form of a verb changes to show who was responsible for the action (the person) and when it occurred (the tense).
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