Conjugating a regular verb means changing the infinitive form of it to indicate person, number, tense, voice and mood in a sentence. Subject and verb have to agree in order for a sentence to be grammatically correct and be understood.
German regular verbs are verbs that exhibit no changes in their stem in the present or past tenses. Most regular verbs are action words. For example, in both English and German, “to play” (“spielen”) is regular because the form of the stem remains the same.
- In a normal statement or sentence the verb is always in the second position.
- The subject can be moved from the first to third position, with an adverb or other element being placed first (inverted word order), but the verb stays in second position.
- most verbs (but not all verbs) end in “-en” in the infinitive. This is the equivalent of the English “to”. Examples: spielen – to play, singen – to sing
- To conjugate, we remove the infinitive ending “-en”, and add the following endings based on the subject pronoun:
There are some differences in how verbs are conjugated based on the spelling of their stems:
- All regular verbs that end in a “z,” “s,” “ss,” or “ß” add only “t” to the “du” conjugation (“tanzen” becomes “du tanzt” (the ending is just “-t” because the stem already ends in “z”) and not “du tanzst”)
- Verbs whose stems end in ‘d’ or ‘t’ require an ‘e’ inserted before “t” or “st” endings (e.g. du findest, er arbeitet, ihr bietet)
- Verbs that end in “eln” or “ern” (e.g. segeln, wandern), can delete the “e” before the “l” or “r,” but it is acceptable either way (i.e. ich segele or ich segle)
- verbs ending in “-ieren” (e.g. diskutieren, telefonieren) are regular verbs, and have no stem vowel changes or other irregularities in the present tense.
Examples:
machen – to make/do
ich mach + “-e” = ich mache I do/make
du mach + “-st” = du machst you do/make
er/sie/es mach + “-t” = er/sie/es macht he/she/it does/makes
wir mach + “-en” = wir machen we do/make
ihr mach + “-t” = ihr macht you do/make
sie/Sie mach + “-en” = sie/Sie machen they/you-formal do/make