You know I am mean? I taught you the hard conjugations first… “Sein” and “Haben” are irregular verbs. Let me show you how to conjugate most verbs…
Alright, so when we went through “sein” and “haben”, you learned those verbs conjugate a bit weird. As a reminder. (watch this part →)
| Sein (to be) | haben (have) | |
| Ich | bin | habe |
| Du | bist | hast |
| Er/Sie/Es | ist | hat |
| Wir | sind | haben |
| Ihr | seid | habt |
| Sie | sind | haben |
Those verbs are called irregular, because they don’t follow the normal pattern. A regular verb follows a simple pattern. I want to look at “lernen” which is “Learn” (watch this part →)
| Ich lerne | I learn |
| Du lernst | You learn |
| Er/Sie/Es lernt | He/She/it learns |
| Wir lernen | We learn |
| Ihr lernt | You all learn |
| Sie lernen | They learn |
So there is something I want to explain using “lernen” from up top. “Lernen” is a kind of “neutral” conjugation, technical term being “infinitive”. When you strip the conjugated ending off, you are left with the “stem”. So “Lernen”, minus the -en, and you are left with lern which is the verb stem. This is important to know as we go over more examples and exceptions.
Now check out the pattern from the “lernen” example up top… yup there is no logic to it, I am sorry. But, if you just remember those 6 endings, you’ll be able to conjugate all regular verbs. (watch this part →)
| Ich | -e |
| Du | -st |
| Er/Sie/Es | -t |
| Wir | -en |
| Ihr | -t |
| Sie | -en |
Let’s look at another example. Spielen (to play) (watch this part →)
| Ich spiele | I play |
| Du spielst | You play |
| Er/Sie/Es spielt | He/she/it plays |
| Wir spielen | We play |
| Ihr spielt | You all play |
| Sie spielen | They play |
You drop the -en of the verb, and add on the correct ending.
Now, things would be too easy if that’s all it was. Let’s talk about some verbs that don’t follow the rule.
If a verb stem ends in -t/-d you have to add an -e before conjugating “du”, “er/sie/es” and “ihr”. For example “arbeiten”. That’s the verb, remove the ending and you get “arbeit”. So the stem is “arbeit” and it ends in a “t”. If you conjugate that verb without adding an e, you end in a double “tt” which is impossible to pronounce. So following what I just said this conjugates to.
| Ich arbeite | I work |
| Du arbeitest (notice the e after the stem) | You work |
| Er/Sie/es arbeitet (notice the e after the stem) | He/she/it works |
| Wir arbeiten | We work |
| Ihr arbeitet (notice the e after the stem) | You all work |
| Sie arbeiten | They work |
There is a similar issue with “-s/-ß/-z/-x”. Let’s look at “reisen” which is to “travel”. If you remove the en, your stem is left with “reis”. If you added st to that you’d end up with a double ss, so instead of adding an e, we just shorten “DU” it by dropping the extra S.
| Ich reise | I travel |
| Du reist (not reisst like you may think) | You travel |
| Er/sie/es reist | He/She/it travels |
| Wir reisen | We travel |
| Ihr reist | You all travel |
| Sie reisen | They travel |
Now let’s chat about the past. Here is the pattern for the past. Notice it’s the same as the present, but it starts with a t. (watch this part →)
| Ich | -te |
| Du | -test |
| Er/Sie/Es | -te |
| Wir | -ten |
| Ihr | -tet |
| Sie | -ten |
As an example let’s stick with learning “Lernen”. (watch this part →)
| Ich lernte | I learned |
| Du lerntest | You learned |
| Er/Sie/Es lernte | He/She/it learned |
| Wir lernten | We learned |
| Ihr lerntet | You all learned |
| Sie lernten | They learned |
Now I will admit, “Ihr lerntet” felt dirty. Grammatically it’s 100% correct, but it’s one of those things you will never have anybody say. Think back to the haben lesson. We didn’t talk on it too much as I knew this post was next, but I did mention that haben is a helper verb for the past. In all actuality if you ever have a conversation, you will most likely do the perfect tense, which uses haben. Consider this a review for how “haben” is conjugated. (watch this part →)
| Ich habe gelernt | I have learned |
| Du hast gelernt. | You have learned |
| Er/Sie/Es hat gelernt. | He/She/it has learned |
| Wir haben gelernt. | We have learned |
| Ihr habt gelernt. | You all have learned |
| Sie haben gelernt. | They have learned |
Finally,
We can speak to the future. For the future tense we simply use the neutral or “infinitive” of the verb and add werden (become or in this case will) beforehand. Let’s stick to lernen. (watch this part →)
| Ich werde lernen. | I will learn. |
| Du wirst lernen. | You will learn. |
| Er/sie/es wird lernen. | He/She/it will learn. |
| Wir werden lernen. | We will learn. |
| Ihr werdet lernen. | You all will learn. |
| Sie werden lernen. | They will learn. |
OMGosh, you rock. Assuming you read the sein and haben blog post, you just learned how to conjugate a bunch of stuff. If you have not read them, why not? Do it, they are helpful.
Let’s put some stuff together. (watch this part →)
| Ich habe gestern ein Buch gekauft. | I bought a book yesterday. |
| Du wirst morgen in die Schule gehen. | You will go to school tomorrow. |
| Er arbeitet an seinem Auto. | He is working on his car. |
| Wir haben gestern italienisch gekocht. | We cooked Italian yesterday. |
| Ihr werdet Samstag eine Katze malen. | You will draw a cat on Saturday. |
| Sie hat letzte Woche ein Haus gekauft. | She bought a house last week. |
