Regular and irregular verbs
#grammar
When you learn German verbs, you’ll stumble upon two different kinds:
Irregular / strong verbs (unregelmäßige / starke Verben) are verbs, that change their stems in certain tenses - mostly the past tense. Sometimes the present tense is also affected. There are less than 200 irregular verbs in the German language, so mostly you’re lucky and come across regular / weak verbs (regelmäßige / schwache Verben).
Those follow a predictable and strict pattern in every tense. The tenses are formed by using the present infinite stem. What’s the stem of a verb then? Before I explain too much, let me give you a couple of examples:
Infinitive Present Simple Past Past Participle
1. lieb-en ich liebe ich liebte geliebt
2. hass-en ich hasse ich hasste gehasst
Don’t pay too much attention to the tenses yet - I just wanted to make it clear what a verb stem is and how it affects the conjugation of regular verbs ;)
In dictionaries, you’ll find a list of all the irregular verbs. You can also find a list here. The GermanHeit twitter posts will always indicate whether a verb is irregular or regular when introducing one.
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