anschauen: Full Conjugation and Usage

Anschauen ("to look at, to watch, to take a look at") is one of the everyday verbs you reach for whenever your eyes settle on something — a film, a photo, a person. It is a separable weak verb built from the prefix an- plus the regular verb schauen ("to look"). Two things make it worth a careful look: the prefix detaches and goes to the end of a main clause, and the verb is almost always used with a dative "of interest" reflexive pronoun — sich etwas anschauen — which has no real counterpart in English. It is also slightly southern and colloquial in flavour; the neutral synonym ansehen behaves identically.

Principal parts

Read this as anschauen – schaute … an – hat angeschaut. Because schauen is a regular (weak) verb, every form is predictable: the past is schaute (stem + -te), and the participle is geschaut. The separable prefix an- slots the -ge- inside itself: an- + ge + schaut → angeschaut, written as one word. The auxiliary is haben — anschauen is transitive (it takes a direct object, the thing you look at), and transitive verbs take haben, not sein.

Why it splits

In a main clause the prefix an- detaches and travels to the very end, while the conjugated schauen part holds second position. Everything else — the object, the time, the manner — sits in the bracket between them.

In subordinate clauses the prefix rejoins the verb at the clause end:

Präsens (present)

The stem stays in second position; the prefix an jumps to the end of the clause. Schauen keeps its vowel throughout (no stem change), so the forms are completely regular apart from the split.

Präteritum (simple past)

Weak past stem schaute (stem + -te); the prefix still detaches. In speech the Perfekt is far more usual; the Präteritum is mainly written.

Perfekt (present perfect)

The everyday spoken past. Auxiliary haben + the participle angeschaut.

Futur I (future)

Formed with werden + the infinitive anschauen (kept joined, at the clause end).

Imperativ (commands)

Konjunktiv II (would / hypothetical)

Weak verbs build the synthetic Konjunktiv II identically to the Präteritum (schaute), so in practice the würde-form (würde anschauen) is used to keep it unambiguous.

Usage: transitive, and the dative "of interest"

Anschauen is transitive: the thing you look at is a direct object in the accusative (den Film anschauen). But in real speech a second pronoun usually appears — a dative reflexive that adds the nuance "for myself, with attention, for my own benefit." This is the so-called dative of interest, and German uses it constantly: Ich schaue mir den Film an rather than the plainer Ich schaue den Film an.

English has no equivalent particle here; you simply say "I'm watching the film." So the mir / dir / sich feels like an extra word with no translation — but leaving it out is what marks a sentence as foreign. The reflexive pronoun is dative (because the object slot is already taken by the accusative thing): mir, dir, sich, uns, euch, sich. See the dative of interest and dative reflexive verbs.

anschauen vs. ansehen

The two are interchangeable in meaning. Anschauen is the more colloquial, more southern (Austrian, Swiss, Bavarian) choice; ansehen is register-neutral and dominant in northern Germany and in writing. Both take haben, both are separable, both prefer the dative reflexive (sich etwas ansehen).

Common idioms and fixed expressions

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Principal parts: anschauen – schaute … an – hat angeschaut (separable, weak; Perfekt with haben).
• It is separable: in a main clause an detaches and goes to the end; it rejoins in subordinate clauses.
• The participle is one word with -ge- inside: angeschaut.
• It is transitive (accusative object) and usually carries a dative reflexive of interest: Ich schaue mir den Film an.
• Anschauen is the colloquial/southern twin of the neutral ansehen — same grammar, same meaning.