Intermediate German: A Grammar and Workbook

Stem vowel change

Many irregular verbs have a stem vowel change:

Infinitive Past participle

finden→ gefunden found

helfen geholfen helped

schreiben geschrieben written

fliegen geflogen flown

Note that many German irregular verbs tend to be irregular in English.

A good way to learn irregular verb forms is to work with a list of verbs,

which you can find at the end of this book and in most dictionaries.

There are also some patterns of stem vowel changes. For more infor-

mation, see page 93.

Mixed verbs – stem vowel change, but ending in -t

There are verbs called mixed verbs which combine the characteristics of

regular and irregular verbs as they change their stem vowelandadd-t

when forming the past participle. Here are some examples:

Infinitive Past participle

brennen→ gebrannt burned

bringen gebracht brought

denken gedacht thought

kennen gekannt known

nennen genannt named

wissen gewusst known

Verbs taking sein

A number of verbs in German form their present perfect tense with the

present tense of sein+past participle. They can be divided into the follow-

ing groups:

Verbs indicating movement from one location to another

This group contains commonly used irregular verbssuch as gehen‘to go’,

fahren‘to go (by vehicle)’, kommen‘to come’, ankommen ‘to arrive’,

laufen‘to run’:

Ich bin ins Kino gegangen.

I have gone/went to the cinema.

Unit 11: The present perfect tense 83

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