geben: Full Conjugation and Usage

Geben ("to give") is a high-frequency strong verb with an e→i vowel change in the present singular. It is doubly important for beginners: first as an everyday verb of transfer (jemandem etwas geben — give someone something), and second as the heart of the construction es gibt ("there is / there are"), which German uses constantly where English uses an empty there. Master both and you cover an enormous amount of real conversation.

Principal parts

Read this as geben – gab – hat gegeben. The vowel runs e → a → e, a classic strong-verb ablaut series. Note that the Partizip II ends in -en (the strong-verb signature), not the -t of weak verbs, and the stem vowel returns to e. The Perfekt auxiliary is haben (hat gegeben) because geben is transitive — it takes a direct object.

Präsens (present)

The e→i change appears only in the du and er/sie/es forms: gibst, gibt. Everywhere else the stem stays geb-. This is the most important fact about geben and the reason beginners say ich gebe but er gibt. The change is purely phonetic history — there is no logical reason for it; it is a fossilised sound shift that you simply memorise as a set with nehmen, helfen, sprechen, essen and the other e→i verbs.

Es gibt — "there is / there are"

The impersonal phrase es gibt means "there is" or "there are." Two facts trip up English speakers:

1. It is always singular (es gibt), whether one thing or many follow.
2. What follows is in the accusative, not the nominative — because grammatically es is the subject and the noun is its object.

Präteritum (simple past)

Note the classic strong-verb pattern: the ich and er/sie/es forms are bare with no ending (gab, not gabe or gabt). The impersonal past es gab ("there was / there were") is extremely common in narration.

Perfekt (present perfect)

Built with the present of haben plus the participle gegeben.

The impersonal Perfekt es hat gegeben exists but is rare; for "there was," German strongly prefers the Präteritum es gab.

Plusquamperfekt (past perfect)

Past form of the auxiliary (hatte) + gegeben.

Futur I

The future uses werden + the infinitive geben at the end.

Imperativ (commands)

The du-imperative is gib — and here is a crucial rule: verbs with an e→i(e) change keep that change in the imperative and take no -e ending. So it is Gib!, never Gebe!. This is the same rule that gives Nimm!, Sieh!, Iss!, Sprich!. See imperative du-form irregularities.

Konjunktiv II (would give / hypothetical)

Geben has a clean, common synthetic Konjunktiv II: gäbe (with umlaut on the past stem gab). This form is fully alive in modern German — you do not need the würde-form here, and es gäbe ("there would be") is everywhere.

Konjunktiv I (reported speech)

Used in formal journalism. The base is gebe (and the impersonal es gebe is common in reported claims).

Usage and government

Like sagen, geben takes a dative recipient and an accusative thing: jemandem (Dativ) etwas (Akkusativ) geben. This is the prototypical "ditransitive" verb, and the dative-before-accusative order is the unmarked default when both are nouns.

Common idioms and fixed expressions

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Principal parts: geben – gab – hat gegeben (strong, ablaut e→a→e, Perfekt with haben).
• Present e→i only in du gibst and er/sie/es gibt; elsewhere the stem stays geb-.
• es gibt = "there is/are": always singular, always
  • accusative
  .
• du-imperative is Gib! — keeps the i, takes no -e.
• Konjunktiv II gäbe / es gäbe is alive and common; no würde-form needed.
• Recipient is a bare dative: gib es mir, never gib es zu mir.