Understanding German Verbs

For example:

For English verbs we use: to bring, brought, have brought, brings.

In German verbs we use: bringen, bringe, habe gebracht, bringt.

The structure of sentences in German is similar to English in that the German verb comes after the noun.

In both English and German there are strong and weak verbs. All verbs are either strong or weak, with the exception of the small group of irregular weak verbs, which we will learn about in another lesson. Weak verbs follow a regular pattern, while strong verbs also add vowel changes.

Many German verbs are much like their English cognates in that they follow the same vowel shift patterns.

For example:

In English we say: drink, drank, drunk

In German we say: trinken, trank, getrunken

In English we use forms of the auxiliary verbs “have” or “to be” to form perfect tense verbs. In German, we use “haben” (have), “sein” (to be), and “werden” (to become) when conjugating verbs. All German verbs take auxiliary verbs, which are determined by the individual verb and must be memorized.

For example:

Ich habe gesagt. = I have said.
Ich bin gefahren. = I have traveled.
Ich werde sagen. = I will say.

Here are the basic conjugations of the auxiliary verbs that should be memorized before learning the German verbs that proceed them.

Present Tense Conjugations of Sein = to be