These are verbs that you can’t do without: fahren - drive, sprechen - talk, talk, lesen - read,sehen- look, see, geben - give, nehmen - take, essen- There is... But they have one feature: a change in the root vowel in the 2nd and 3rd person singular present tense. These forms are highlighted in bold below.

The pattern is this: all these are strong verbs, the root vowel of which can undergo any changes. If a strong verb has a vowel at its root i or diphthong ei(bitten - ask, heißen - to be called, to be called), then further changes to the root vowels are impossible. And if the root of a strong verb is a vowel a, diphthong au or vowel e, then in the overwhelming majority of cases such verbs change the root vowel in the 2nd and 3rd l. units present time.

The spelling of some of these verbs is determined by the need to convey a long or short vowel:

Just like essen - There is, strong verbs vergessen are conjugated - forget and fressen - eat, eat (about animals and roughly - about people). Strong verbs with prefixes are conjugated in the same way as corresponding verbs without prefixes: for example, treten - step on (sth.)- betreten - enter (into a room), sprechen - talk, talk- unpretentious - discuss.

Strong verbs gehen - go And stehen - stand also have e in the root, but they have a vowel during conjugation does not change: ich gehe - du gehst, er geht; ich stehe - du stehst, er steht.

Now you know how the verb sprechen is conjugated - talk, talk, and can report what language you, your companion, etc. speak. Here are the symbols of different languages:

• Russian ["rʋsɪʃ] - in Russian
• Deutsch- in German
• Englisch ["εŋlɪʃ] - in English
• Französisch - French
• Spanisch ["ʃpa:nɪʃ] - in Spanish
• Italienisch - in Italian
• Chinesisch [çi"ne:zɪʃ] - in Chinese

So, “ich spreche Deutsch.” Make up examples with the verb sprechen in different persons and numbers and language symbols. Ask your interlocutor (addressing him “you” and “you”) whether he speaks such and such a language.

In such cases, explanations that can be inserted between “ich spreche” and the name of the language are very useful:

• auch - too, also
• ein wenig - A little
• ein bisschen ["bisçən] - a little bit, a little bit
• nur - only

Example: Ich spreche ein wenig Deutsch. - I speak German a little bit.

According to the old German orthography, there was a distinction between the nouns Russisch, Deutsch, etc., on the one hand, and the adverbs russisch, deutsch, etc. - with another. Now the names of languages ​​are in all cases written with a capital letter.

German verbs, like Russian ones, consist of a stem and an ending -en or -n.

Let's look at verb conjugation using a simple example:

learn en

The verb lernen (translation: teach, study) consists of a stem (red) and an ending (blue)

The endings of verbs, in turn, change depending on the person, number and tense in which the verb is used.

In German, as in Russian, there is

singular: I, you, he, she, it, you (polite form), woman, cat, boy

and plural: we, you, they, you (polite form), people, cities, books

There are also times. There are only six of them in German, but only five are used.

We'll start with the verb conjugation lernen in present time Präsens

Conjugation of weak verbs in Präsens

In German they also say: I teach, you teach, she teaches, we teach, and so on.

You will notice that the forms for er, sie, es and ihr are the same and have the ending -t, also the verb form for wir, sie, Sie is similar to the initial form of the verb, that is, the Infinitiv of the verb and has an ending -en.

Features of verb conjugation in the present tense

If the stem of the verb (weak or strong, not changing the root vowel) ends in -d, t or a combination of consonants chn, ffn, dm, gn, tm (e.g. antworten, bilden, zeichnen), then between the stem of the verb and the personal ending is inserted vowel e.

If the stem of the verb (weak or strong) ends in -s, -ss, -ß, -z, -tz (e.g. grüßen, heißen, lesen, sitzen), then in the 2nd person singular the s at the end is dropped, and the verbs get the ending -t.

Please note that the form of the verb when used politely (the pronoun you) in German coincides with the 3rd person plural.

You see that strong verbs also have conjugation features in the present tense.

The conjugations of such verbs can be carefully studied on a table specially developed by the Start Deutsch team

In addition to weak verbs, German has strong verbs:

a) Strong verbs in the 2nd and 3rd person singular modify the root vowel:

a, au, o receive an umlaut (e.g. fahren, laufen, halten)

vowel e becomes i or ie (geben, lesen)

b) For strong verbs with an inflected root vowel, the stem of which ends in -t, in the 2nd and 3rd person singular the connecting vowel e is not added, and in the 3rd person the ending is also not added (for example, halten - du hältst, er hält), and in the second person plural (where the root vowel does not change) they, like weak verbs, receive a connecting -e- (ihr haltet).

Also in the German language there are verbs whose conjugation must be learned by heart. These include:

Auxiliary verbs

sein (to be)

haben (to have)

werden (to become)

according to their morphological features, they belong to irregular verbs, which, when conjugated in the present, exhibit a deviation from the general rule.

Watch and learn the conjugation of auxiliary verbs in the present tense Präsens. When learning German, you need to know these verbs , because they are used not only in the present tense, but also with their help to form the past tense, the future tense and the passive, which is important in the German language.

AND modal verbs You also need to learn it by heart!

Please note that modal verbs in the 1st and 3rd person singular do not receive an ending -e and some of them lose the umlaut in the conjugation.

If this topic is not yet clear to you, then you can watch a video on conjugating German verbs in the present tense.

Now let's move on to conjugating verbs in the simple past tense Präteritum.

To construct a sentence in the simple past tense Präteritum you need to know the formation of three forms of the verb and choose the 2nd form Präteritum

1 form - Infinitive(initial verb form)
2 form - Präteritum(used to form the simple past tense Präteritum)
3 form - Patrizip 2(it is used to form the complex past tense Perfect)

Let's take the same verb lernen. As you already know, the verb lernen is a weak verb. In order for you to better understand this you, we will also conjugate the strong verb fahren. First, we need to select the form of the verb we need (highlighted in gray). Then look at the table and substitute the necessary endings.

lernen - lernte - gelern
fahren - fuhr - gefahren

That is, in the place in the table where there is a dash, the form Präteritum is used (lernte, fuhr, etc.)

You just need to remember the endings in this form and also correctly identify the 2nd form of the verb. That's all! Pretty simple, right?

They conjugate using the same principle auxiliary verbs in Präteritum:

Attention! Modal verbs are used in the past tense only in the Präteritum tense, even if you speak in Perfect!

Therefore, you need to memorize modal verbs in the form Präteritum!

Everything is not as complicated as it seems at first glance :)

Good luck in learning German!

Svetlana Kizhikova,

Fahren* (hat/ist) 1. to go, ride, 2. drive (a car) (fährt, fuhr, hat/ist gefahren) 1. Wir sind mit dem Zug gefahren . 2. Wann fährt die nächste Straßenbahn? 3. Fahr nicht so schnell. 4. Haben Sie den Wagen gefahren? 5. Der Chef fährt einen Mercedes. 6. Soll ich dich nach Hause fahren? 7. Sie hat ihre Mutter zum Bahnhof gefahren. 8. Kannst du schon Fahrrad fahren?

Fahren* (hat/ist) - more sentences: 9. Es ist gefährlich, gleichzeitig zu telefonieren und zu fahren. 10. Sie müssen noch zwei Haltestellen weiter fahren. 11. Er bot ihr an, sie nach Hause zu fahren. 12. Hier musst du langsam fahren. Das ist eine verkehrsberuhigte Zone. 13. Ich möchte nach Hamburg fahren. Können Sie mir sagen, welche Strecke am besten ist? 14. Wir fahren dieses Jahr wieder an die See. 15. Die Verbindung ist sehr gut. Ich kann direkt fahren und muss nicht umsteigen. 16. Zum Hauptbahnhof können Sie mit der Linie 8 fahren . 17. Ich fahre jeden Morgen mit dem Rad zur Arbeit. 18. Er fährt sportlich. 19. Wohin fährt dieser Bus? 20. Weißt du zufällig, wann der letzte Bus fährt ?

ist gefahren Der Zug ist gefahren. Er ist nach Berlin gefahren. Wir sind mit dem Zug gefahren . hat gefahren Wer von euch hat das Auto gefahren ? Er hat den Wagen in die garage gefahren. Er fährt einen ganz neuen Wagen.