Verbs And Their Conjugations

An important subject for discussion right away is: verb forms.

You already understand that verbs are extremely important; they "rule" the predicate, which is most of the sentence, and they do a lot of other things for the speaker. Because their functions are very complex, there are many different forms within the verb system, and grammarians have found many different ways to divide up the forms and functions.

The system that includes all verb forms is called:

Conjugation

The conjugation of verbs includes:

finite (conjugated) and the infinite form
voice: active or passive
mood: the indicative, the imperative, the subjunctive
tense: the present tense and several past and future tenses
verb forms corresponding to the different "persons"in singular and plural

Does that seem like a lot? Relax, in the beginning sequence we will only teach those forms that Germans use every day. Because, in fact, while most Germans recognize the implications of all these forms when they hear them, they prefer simple structures for daily use. This is true of English, too, but speakers of the two languages have tended to simplify in different ways.

A finite form is one that changes to reflect the subject (number and person), the tense, etc.; an infinite form is one that does not change, including the infinitive (sein, wollen, gehen). In English, the infinitive includes the word "to" (to be, to go) but in German it is just one word, which ends with -en (except for sein). It is the universally accepted convention that verbs in dictionaries be given in their infinitive form, and we follow this in our Wortschatz.

In modern English, there is very little marking of person or number in verbs, so we may not even be aware that a verb can express or "agree with" the subject. The third person singular form (he, she, it), ends with an -s in the present tense, but for any other person you use the same form in most verbs. German - you may have noticed - has a wealth of forms; it has different verb endings for almost all persons in singular and plural.

There are two special classes of verbs we must mention here.

As in English, German verbs use auxiliary verbs to form some of the tenses (I have gone, I will go) and the passive forms (I am attracted). The auxiliary verb changes to fit the person and number, but it is followed by the infinitive or the past participle, which don't change. Just as in English, two of these auxiliaries are the verbs "to be" and "to have" ("sein" and "haben"), but there is a third, "werden" ("to become", roughly). Since they are so frequently used, we will learn some of their forms right away.

Another group of verbs which have a special way of operating is the modals. We have these in English, too, but they are so commonly used that you may not realize they form a special class: can, will, may. Some of them you have met in our text: können and wollen. They are also used very frequently, but we will deal with them in another chapter.