Common Verb Irregularities in Present Tense in German

Hey, in one of the previous posts we were talking about irregularities in the conjugation of regular verbs in German. Those verb irregularities resulted from phonetics. We sometimes insert an additional E like in DU ATM-E-ST to make the form easier to pronounce. Sometimes we drop a letter, like in DU SITZ-T instead of DU *SITZ-ST, also to make things easier to pronounce.

But there are also other irregularities in verb conjugation. Sometimes in Present Tense verbs slightly change their stems, so the vowels are replaced by other vowels or groups of vowels.

One thing worth mentioning right away is that the irregularities only occur in the second and third person singular, whereas all the other forms are regular.

An Example

Let’s start with an example.

The verb GEBEN (to give) conjugates like this:

As you can see, everything’s pretty much regular, except that in the second and third person singular E changed into I. This is the kind of change we’ll be talking about in this article. The E → I change is just one of the possible changes. There are others. But, as we already started with this example, let’s have a look at the E → I change first.

E → I

So, you know the verb GEBEN follows this pattern. But there are more verbs like that. Here also belong the following verbs:

E → IE

Another common irregularity is the shift from E to IE, like in the verb SEHEN (to see):

Other verbs like this:

A → Ä

Another very common irregularity is the shift from A to Ä, like in the verb FAHREN (to go by car / train / bus etc., drive):

Other verbs like this:

Other Changes

The changes described above are the most common ones, but occasionally you may come across other patterns as well. Here are some examples:

Naturally, these are just a couple examples. There are more verbs with irregularities in Present Tense. Just keep in mind that the change only occurs in the second and third person singular. All other personal forms are regular.

INFO

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