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Verb is a part of speech that expresses an activity, state or a process. The verbs are written in lower-case and are conjugated for persons and numbers. They are also used in various tenses and moods e.g. present/future/past tense, subjunctive/imperative mood.
Most often the verb is placed at the second position in the sentence, except for if there are other verbs in the sentence or the sentence is a subordinate clause, in which case the word order depends on the other parts of the sentence.
The base (unconjugated) form of the verb is the infinitive (Infinitiv). In order to conjugate a verb for person, an appropriate suffix has to be added to the verb stem. The example shows the conjugation of the verb gehen (the verb stem is geh).
| Person | gehen (Präsens) |
|---|---|
| ich | gehe |
| du | gehst |
| er/sie/es | geht |
| wir | gehen |
| ihr | geht |
| sie/Sie | gehen |
It is also common to divide the verbs into the following groups (a verb may belong to more than one of the following groups):
A verb in its base, unconjugated form (most often used in sentences with more than one verb and in that case it is placed at the end of the sentence).
Verb that can appear in a sentence on its own.
Verb used together with another verb in order to build a sentence in a given tense or mood (e.g. in the past tense or in the passive voice). There are three auxiliary verbs in German: haben, sein, werden.
Modal verbs almost always appears in a sentence with another verb. It can be used on its own, but it rarely happens and it would have to be used in some context, e.g. as a reference to the previous sentence. These are the modal verbs: dürfen, können, mögen, wollen, sollen, müssen .
Verb form with the suffix -d appended to the infinitive. It expresses an activity being performed during which another activity is performed. The Partizip I describes under what circumstances the latter activity was performed.
Verb form used to build sentences in certain tenses/moods, e.g. in the past tense Perfekt and in the passive voice. For regular verbs, the form of the Partizip II is created by adding the prefix ge- and the suffix -t to the verb's base.
Verbs that have an regular form in the following tenses: Präteritum (verb's base + -te) and Perfekt (the form of Partizip II is regular: ge- + verb stem + -t) e.g. machen - machte - gemacht.
If the base of the verb begins with a prefix which doesn't get the prefix ge- in the Paritizip II but apart from that the conjugation is regular, then the verb is also consider to be regular e.g. besuchen - besuchte - besucht.
Verbs that technically have an irregular conjugation, but it is "less irregular". Their Partizip II form ends with -en instead of ending with -t and their Präteritum form is irregular. Most often their forms of Präteritum, Partizip II require a change of one or two letters in the verb stem e.g. (a 👉 u, ie 👉 ei). fahren - fuhr - gefahren or bleiben - blieb - geblieben. Additionally, sometimes in the tense Präsens in the third person singular (er/sie/es) an umlaut is added to the verb e.g. fahren - er fährt.
Verbs that have an irregular tense form Präteritum and an irregular participle Partizip II.
Transitive verbs are those that can refer to the accusative object (Akkusativobjekt). They can be used to build a sentence with the passive voice. On the other hand, intransitive verbs are those that cannot refer to an object in the the accusative case Akkusativ and cannot form the passive voice.
In German, reflexive verbs are those with the reflexive pronoun sich (oneself), which is inflected together with the verb for person.
Verbs describing mutual actions. They can be used with the reflexive pronoun sich or with the reciprocal pronoun einander (each other).
Separable verbs have a prefix which can be separated from the verb stem and usually moves to the end of the sentence (it is also important to place the prefix of a separable verb correctly in its Partizip II form). When it comes to inseparable verbs, they also have a prefix but it cannot be separate from the verb stem.