German Present Tense: Regular Verb Conjugation
After this lesson you can conjugate any regular German verb — the pattern behind thousands of words.
Do this first: Personal pronouns
German Present Tense: Regular Verb Conjugation
A German verb changes its ending to show who is doing the thing. Six people, six endings — and they are the same endings for almost every verb in the language. Learn them once and thousands of verbs open up.
A German verb changes its ending to show who is doing the thing. Six people, six endings — and they are the same endings for almost every verb in the language. Learn them once and thousands of verbs open up.
ich
↓
ich lerne
-e
The letter ich becomes -e. For example: ich lerne.
The video for this lesson is being made. Here is the idea in the meantime.
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Kulturnotiz
The absence of a continuous tense is why German speakers learning English so often say "I am working here since 2019". German makes no distinction between "I work" and "I am working", so the habit has to be built from scratch in the other direction — and, going your way, it means one less tense to learn. Ich lerne Deutsch is all you ever need.
Common questions
+How do I find the stem of a verb?
Drop the -en from the infinitive. lernen → lern-, wohnen → wohn-, spielen → spiel-. A few verbs end in -n only (sammeln, ändern), where you drop just the -n.
+Why is it du arbeitest and not du arbeitst?
Because the stem ends in -t, and arbeitst is close to unpronounceable. German inserts an -e before the du, er/sie/es and ihr endings for stems ending in -t, -d or an awkward cluster.
+How do I say "I am learning" as opposed to "I learn"?
The same way: Ich lerne. German has no continuous form, so the plain present covers both. If you need to stress it is happening now, add gerade — Ich lerne gerade.
+Which endings are identical?
wir and sie/Sie both take -en, which is also the infinitive. And er/sie/es and ihr both take -t. That means only four distinct endings to learn, not six.