Present Tense Conjugation

Posted Oct 8, 12:45 PM by ben

Verbs conjugate in like 40 different ways. It’s crazy. I’ll take a chunk at a time and focus in on regular present tense conjugation. English present-tense verbs tend to just add an ‘s’ or an ‘es’ onto the ending. Deutsch, however, differentiates the verb based on what the subject is. For example, “I”, “he”, “she”, “it” all use slightly different conjugations. Deutsch also doesn’t have a present progressive and simply relies on context as opposed to English changes in “I buy” and “I am buying”.

So lets try out an example: Spielen (to play).

Deutsch English
ich spiele I play
du spielst you play
er spielt he plays
sie spielt she plays
es speilt it plays
(plural)
wir spielen we play
irh spielt you (plural)[guys gals people] play
sie spielen they play
Sie spielen You play (formal)

As a general rule, er, sie, and es typically have the same conjugation.


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10 months away from a trip to Germany. 10 months to become as fluent as I can in German.

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