A Foundation Course in Reading German, 2017a

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12/8/2017
PERSON SINGULAR PLURAL
1ST ich warte/finde wir warten/finden
2ND du wartest/findest ihr wartet/findet
3RD er/sie/es wartet/findet sie/Sie warten/finden
The only differences then are in the singular, second and third person, where an –e
is added so that we can append the personal endings –st and –t.
Note: The majority of verbs in German form their present tense in the way shown
for our example spielen.
Remember that the German present tense can be translated variously: “he does
play,” “he is playing,” “he plays,” or even – depending on time information given in
context – “he will play,” “he has played,” or “he has been playing.” Note that all of
these translations still share the meaning that the action is taking place at the
“present moment” (although that can be defined by a specific future time reference)
– whether the action is ongoing, starting, finishing, or only momentary is what you
need to interpret from context. In any case, German present tense never indicates a
completed, past event.
Unit: 2: Cases, present tense
6. Present Tense of Irregular Verbs
Irregular verbs (also called “strong” verbs) change their root form as they are
conjugated. For the most part, they form their present tense in exactly the same
way as regular verbs. Thus “he swims” is er schwimmt, “they swim” sie
schwimmen.
Some irregular verbs, however, will undergo a change in the stem vowel in the
present tense singular, second and third person, for example: du gibst (you give)
and er gibt (he gives) are conjugations of geben (to give). The importance of this
change to the reader of German is that you will have to recognize that the meaning
of, for example, gibst, will be found under the dictionary entry for geben. You
should remember that there are four patterns of vowel changes in case you need to
look up a verb in the dictionary: