German verb conjugation

German verbs conjugate for person and number in the present tense, and form the past in more than one way — a compound Perfekt and a simple Präteritum. Which one a speaker reaches for depends on the verb, the register, and the region as much as on speech versus writing. Most of the system is regular enough to learn as a set of endings; the parts that aren't regular — stem changes, irregular participles, the choice between two auxiliary verbs — are exactly the parts worth spending deliberate time on, because they're also the parts you'll use constantly.

Präsens: the regular endings

Regular ("weak") verbs in the present tense drop the -en (or -n) from the infinitive and add a person-specific ending to the stem. Take machen (to make/do), stem mach-:

That six-slot pattern — -e, -st, -t, -en, -t, -en — is the backbone of the entire present tense, and it applies to the overwhelming majority of German verbs without modification. A stem ending in -d, -t, or certain consonant clusters (öffnen, arbeiten) inserts an -e- before the ending purely for pronunciation — du arbeitest, not du arbeitst — but the underlying pattern is the same six endings.

Stem-changing verbs

A specific group of strong verbs changes its stem vowel in the du and er/sie/es forms only — the rest of the conjugation stays regular. This matters because it's easy to assume a verb is irregular throughout when actually only two of its six forms differ from the pattern above.

Three vowel shifts cover most of these verbs:

• a → ä: fahren (to drive) → du fährst, er/sie/es fährt. Wir fahren, ihr fahrt, sie fahren stay regular.
• e → i: geben (to give) → du gibst, er/sie/es gibt.
• e → ie: sehen (to see) → du siehst, er/sie/es sieht.

There's no rule that predicts which verbs shift and which don't from the infinitive alone — fahren shifts, sagen doesn't, and both look like ordinary -en verbs on the page. This is memorized per verb, which is one reason a ranked list like the 100 most common German verbs is worth working through directly rather than trying to derive conjugations from spelling patterns.

Weak, strong, and mixed verbs

For the past tenses it helps to name three groups, not two:

• Weak (regular) verbs keep their stem and add dental endings: machen – machte – gemacht. The large majority of verbs are weak.
• Strong (irregular) verbs change their stem vowel and take an -en participle: gehen – ging – gegangen, sehen – sah – gesehen.
• Mixed verbs do both — a changed stem like a strong verb, but the weak -te past and -t participle: bringen – brachte – gebracht, denken – dachte – gedacht, kennen – kannte – gekannt, wissen – wusste – gewusst. There are only a handful, but they're common, so learn them as a set.

The three-part form — infinitive, Präteritum, Partizip II — is the standard way to record any verb whose past isn't fully regular, and it's how the sections below treat them.

Perfekt: haben or sein, plus Partizip II

The Perfekt is the usual past tense in everyday speech: a conversation about yesterday, last week, or last year in spoken German more often uses Perfekt than Präteritum for most verbs (the frequent exceptions — sein, haben, and the modals — are covered below), even though English speakers instinctively reach for the simple past. Perfekt is built from an auxiliary verb (haben or sein), conjugated for person, plus the Partizip II (past participle) of the main verb, which stays unchanged regardless of person: ich habe gemacht, du hast gemacht, er hat gemacht — the participle doesn't move.

Forming the Partizip II. Weak (regular) verbs form it as ge- + stem + -t: machen → gemacht, spielen → gespielt, kaufen → gekauft. Strong (irregular) verbs form it as ge- + stem (often changed) + -en: gehen → gegangen, sehen → gesehen, sprechen → gesprochen. The strong pattern is the one worth memorizing case by case, since the stem itself often shifts in ways that aren't predictable from the infinitive — trinken → getrunken, not getrinkt or getrunkt.

Verbs already carrying an inseparable prefix (be-, ge-, er-, ver-, zer-, ent-, emp-, miss-) or ending in -ieren skip the ge- entirely: besuchen → besucht, verstehen → verstanden, studieren → studiert. The separable verbs guide covers what happens to the ge- when the verb has a separable prefix instead — it doesn't disappear, it moves into the middle of the word.

Which auxiliary? This is the choice that actually needs a rule, because guessing wrong is a common and noticeable mistake. Sein is used for:

• Verbs of motion from one place to another: gehen (to go), fahren (to drive), fliegen (to fly), laufen (to run).
• Verbs of change of state: aufwachen (to wake up), sterben (to die), werden (to become), wachsen (to grow).
• A short list of exceptions that don't fit either pattern but are used constantly: sein itself, bleiben (to stay), passieren (to happen).

Every other verb takes haben — which in practice means haben is the default and sein is the marked case you check for. Two caveats sit on top of that, though, because auxiliary choice depends on meaning, transitivity, and region, not on a single clean rule:

• Transitivity flips it. The sein verbs above are really the intransitive ones describing the movement or change itself; add a direct object and the same verb takes haben. Ich bin nach Berlin gefahren (I travelled there — no object, sein) but ich habe das Auto gefahren (I drove the car — an object, haben).
• Region flips it too. The position verbs sitzen, stehen, and liegen form the Perfekt with sein in Switzerland, Austria, and much of southern Germany (ich bin gestanden), but with haben across much of northern Germany (ich habe gestanden). Both are correct in their own region; neither is the single standard.

The double infinitive (Ersatzinfinitiv). With modal verbs, and with a few others such as sehen, hören, and lassen, the Perfekt often replaces the expected participle with a second infinitive: Ich habe arbeiten müssen (I had to work), not ich habe arbeiten gemusst; Ich habe ihn kommen sehen (I saw him come), not …gesehen. This "substitute infinitive" is part of why the spoken Perfekt of a modal sounds heavy enough that speakers usually reach for the Präteritum (ich musste arbeiten) instead — but you'll meet the double-infinitive form in writing, so it's worth recognising.

Präteritum: the simple past

The Präteritum (simple past) is formed differently — weak verbs add -te plus a person ending to the stem (machen → ich machte, du machtest...), strong verbs change the stem vowel again, often to a third distinct form beyond the infinitive and the Partizip II (gehen → ging, sehen → sah, sprechen → sprach).

The usage split is worth internalizing, as long as you treat it as a tendency rather than a strict rule. In writing — narrative prose, news reporting, formal text — the Präteritum is the default past, the way English uses its simple past. In everyday speech many verbs lean toward the Perfekt, to the point that a Präteritum can sound stiff or literary. But this varies by verb (see the exception below) and by region: in parts of southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland the spoken Präteritum is rarer still, while northern speakers use it more freely. It's a lean, not a wall.

The one sharp exception: sein, haben, and the modal verbs (können, müssen, dürfen, sollen, wollen, mögen) are Präteritum even in speech. Ich war müde (I was tired), ich hatte keine Zeit (I had no time), ich musste gehen (I had to go) are all far more natural spoken than their Perfekt equivalents (ich bin müde gewesen, ich habe keine Zeit gehabt, ich habe gehen müssen), which exist grammatically but sound noticeably heavier in conversation. If you learn only one Präteritum set fluently for speaking, make it this one — it covers a disproportionate share of what actually gets said out loud.

Putting it together

A verb's full conjugation profile — Präsens, its er/sie/es form if it stem-changes, Präteritum, Partizip II, and its auxiliary — is really five separate facts that happen to share one infinitive. Weak, non-stem-changing verbs let you derive four of the five from the rules above; strong and stem-changing verbs need each fact checked and learned individually, which is exactly why the highest-frequency verbs (heavily strong, heavily irregular) reward direct memorization more than rule-application.

Common mistakes

• Choosing the wrong auxiliary. Reaching for haben with an intransitive change-of-place verb: it's ich bin gegangen, not ich habe gegangen.
• Regularising a strong verb. Applying the weak ge-…-t pattern to a strong verb — getrinkt instead of getrunken, gegeht instead of gegangen.
• Overusing the Präteritum in speech. For most verbs the spoken past is the Perfekt; a spoken Präteritum can sound stiff — except with sein, haben and the modals, where it's the natural choice.

How WunderDict helps

When you look a word up in WunderDict and it's a verb, the conjugation comes back filled in — Präsens forms, Präteritum, Partizip II, and the auxiliary — rather than something you reconstruct from the rules above every time you need it. Save it to a list and the full profile travels with the word.

Looking a verb up in WunderDict fills in its conjugation grid, its Partizip II and the auxiliary it takes, so the principal parts are there when you save it to a list. It's part of the same free-account practice suite as the rest of WunderDict's quizzes — guest mode covers search and list-building, but scored practice needs an account. The 100 most common German verbs is a good place to start, since those are the verbs you'll actually need this system for most often. See the other guides for more.