German has only one present tense. It is the equivalent of three possible forms in English. ich sage I say I am saying I do say In addition, the German present tense is often used, frequently with specific adverbials of time,…
What are verbs? Verbs are words that express actions, processes, or states of being. The verb form that you will find in your vocabulary list and in dictionaries is called the infinitive. While in English the infinitive of a verb…
Here is an activity I use to teach the German simple past tense inductively. Students are already familiar with the perfect tense, and they have begun practicing the simple past forms of haben, sein, and the modal verbs (though this…
This is the first in a new series of weekly posts that will closely examine some of the most commonly used words in German. Vocabulary words are chosen from the top 1000 words in German (as determined by Tschirner and…
Top German verbs are from Tschirner & Jones’ Frequency Dictionary of German I posted a list of the top 100 German verbs a while back. It’s time to return to that list and do some more work with German verbs. Every…
In an earlier post, I outlined how German auxiliaries and the various verb principal parts work together in forming each of the verb tenses. There I listed some representative verbs to show the patterns that exist in the formation of…
Today I put up a page on the 100 most commonly used German verbs. We’ll do lots of fun and useful things with this list — and the 500 most common German words list — in the coming days and weeks.…
This verb list comes from Randall Jones & Erwin Tschirner’s A Frequency Dictionary of German. Core Vocabulary for Learners, which lists the 4034 (!) most commonly used words in German. We’ll be doing lots of fun things with this list with…
In English, “to study” means to learn, read, memorize, practice, and reflect on a subject. In German, the verb lernen is used to talk about these learning activities. Wir lernen Deutsch. We are learning German. (i.e. as a general activity:…
