Lesson 7: The present tense I
Let’s attack the verbs now! We start with the present tense. It’s used for actions you do now, or things you do regularly, just like in English. However, you can also use it as a future tense, except for predictions and when you stress the future actions. For that, we use the future tense (we’ll see it later).
In German, there are ‘strong‘ verbs and ‘weak‘ verbs. The difference is that the stem of the verb (e.g. ‘lern’ in lernen) does not change in the conjugation of the ‘weak’ verbs. They do change with the ‘strong’ verbs, but not necessarily in the present tense. Let’s start in this lecture with the ‘weak’ verbs.
The conjugation of lernen (to learn), it’s the most used way (revise the pronouns here):
- Ich lerne
- Du lernst
- Er/sie/es lernt
- Wir lernen
- Ihr lernt
- sie/Sie lernen
The endings are in bold. It may seem complicated, but what might help you is the four last ones: they’re -t -en -t -en.
There are some exceptions, we’ll see more in another lesson. An e is added where there’s no e in the endings in some cases: when the stem ends on -d, -t or (-ch/t/f/g + n/m). Let’s see two examples to clarify:
Arbeiten (to work):
- Ich arbeite
- Du arbeitest
- Er/sie/es arbeitet
- Wir arbeiten
- Ihr arbeitet
- sie/Sie arbeiten
Öffnen (to open):
- Ich öffne
- Du öffnest
- Er/sie/es öffnet
- Wir öffnen
- Ihr öffnet
- sie/Sie öffnen
Words
Let’s see some words to make the exercises below:
- Arbeiten (= to work)
- Öffnen (= to open)
- Sagen (= to say)
- Finden (= to find)
- Lernen (= to learn)
- Atmen (= to breathe)
Exercises
Translate the conjugations
- You say (single)
- He opens
- You learn (formal)
- You find (plural)
- She breathes
- They work
- We say
- I learn
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Solutions
- Du sagst
- Er öffnet
- Sie lernen
- Ihr findet
- sie atmet
- sie arbeiten
- wir sagen
- ich lerne