Irregular verbs in the past tense
In the last lesson, we learned that regular (weak) verbs form the simple past (Präteritum) by adding -te to the stem. Irregular (strong) verbs, however, do not use a -te ending. Instead, they change their core vowel.
Because the Präteritum is the tense of storytelling, you will see these strong verbs constantly in fairy tales, novels, and news reports.
When conjugating strong verbs in the Präteritum, the ich and er/sie/es forms have no ending at all—they are just the new stem. The other pronouns take standard endings.
| Pronoun | Ending | Example (kommen -> kam) |
|---|
| ich / er / sie / es | - | kam |
| wir / sie / Sie | -en | kamen |
| du | -st | kamst |
| ihr | -t | kamt |
Let's look at a few of the most essential strong verbs in German:
- gehen (to go) becomes ging
- kommen (to come) becomes kam
- sprechen (to speak) becomes sprach
Action and movement
Classic stories are full of knights and dragons leaping into action. Here are a few more strong verbs you will frequently encounter when reading:
- treten (to step) becomes trat
- nehmen (to take) becomes nahm
- fliegen (to fly) becomes flog
- schlagen (to hit) becomes schlug
Modals in the past tense
Modal verbs like wollen (to want) and können (to be able to) are incredibly common in storytelling. They act a bit like regular verbs because they take the -te ending, but notice that if they have an umlaut in the present tense, they drop it in the past tense!
- wollen becomes wollte
- können becomes konnte
More strong verbs
Because there is no single rule for exactly how the vowel changes across different verbs, you will naturally learn the forms of strong verbs through practice and reading. Here are a few more highly useful ones to round out your storytelling toolkit:
- werfen (to throw) becomes warf
- fangen (to catch) becomes fing
- reiten (to ride) becomes ritt