# irregular verbs



## PacoBajito

Hi everybody
I would like to know how can understand when a verb is irregular: for example if ich nehmen becomes er nimmt what about erklaeren?
Thank you


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## herrkeinname

PacoBajito said:


> Hi everybody
> I would like to know how can understand when a verb is irregular: for example if ich nehmen becomes er nimmt what about erklaeren?
> Thank you


Ich erkläre
Du erklärst
Er/Sie/Es erklärt

I don't think there is an overall rule. The best and most efficient way is to learn a number of verbs by rote and in the course of time you will spot some similarities between them.


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## b00nish

As native speaker I luckily never have to think seriously about irregular verbs in the german language.

But of course there are regular verbs in our language and some irregular verbs too.

Ich gehe / du gehst / er geht
Ich trinke / du trinkst / er trinkt
Ich kaufe / du kaufst / er kauft
Ich hänge / du hängst / er hängt
Ich bekomme / du bekommst / er bekommt
(and much, much more)

These one for exmaple seem to be regular to me - there is a root and similar endings.

Then of course you got some verbs with changing roots (you'll have to learn them, I guess).

Ich nehme / du nimmst / er nimmt
Ich spreche / du sprichst / er spricht
Ich steche / du stichst / er sticht

(Ich esse / du isst/ er isst)

Sometimes you have pretty similar roots but with an additional 'e' for exmaple:

Ich reite / du reitest / er reitet
Ich töte / du tötest / er tötet
Ich wende / du wendest / er wendet

And sometimes changing endings:

Ich will / du willst / er will
Ich darf / du darfst / er darf
Ich mag / du magst / er mag
(here, the 3. Sg. is like the 1. Sg. as you can see)

And somewhat completely irregular for example

Ich bin / du bist / er ist



But that is just a try... as I said, if you're a native speaker, you never have to think about such issues.


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## Hutschi

Hi, there is no general rule but tendencies:

1. The most verbs are regular.
2. The most irregular verbs are used often, so after a short time, you can memorize them.
3. If an irregular verb is used very seldom, there is a tendency that it either will become extinct or it will become regular. So usually you do not need it or can build it regular, they will understand you. This method changed indeed the German language. "Ich backe" has the strong past form: "ich buk" - but many said "ich backte", and now this is accepted, too.

The good thing of this is that you have to learn maybe 200 irregular verbs and can consider the rest as regular. (Usually you will need about 50 such verbs in daily life.) The conjugation table of Bertelsmann "Die neue deutsche Rechtschreibung" shows 188 such words.

If you do not know, you can use the regular form. It will be wrong, but they will understand you.

Another thing:
Many of the verbs which are irregular in English are irregular in German, too, if they have the same root. (Singen, sang, gesungen, English: sing, sang, sung) 

But all of these are only rules of thumb.

By the way:
The most of the irregular verbs use rules which are forgotten. So they are members of conjugation classes. They use a kind of "inside" conjugation with "umlauts" (more exact: "ablauts"). So they are not strictly irregular. You can group them into these classes and this may help you to learn them (for example: build rhymes and assonances ...)

Example:
gehen - ging - gegangen - du gehst
hängen - hing - gehangen - du hängst

schwimmen - schwamm - geschwommen - du schwimmst
nehmen - nahm - genommen - du nimmst

geben - gab - gegeben - du gibst
sehen - sah - gesehen - du siehst


See also: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unregelm%C3%A4%C3%9Fige_Verben


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## PacoBajito

Thanks to you two. You were very kind to me, and Hutschi in particular was even a moral support to me


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## Hutschi

Hi,

here is a list of such verbs.

http://www.iee.et.tu-dresden.de/~wernerr/grammar/verben_dt.html

You see, the most irregularities are in the usage of time ...

The irregular verbs reflect an older conjugation system.


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## berndf

Hutschi said:


> The irregular verbs reflect an older conjugation system.


 
I would be interested to know why you say that. I regards the strong conjugation system as still present in modern German. The only thing which has changed is that out of the ca. 400 stong verbs in OHG about half have shifted from strong to weak conjugation and this process is still going on (e.g. a majority of speakers conjugate "wenden" as "wendet", "wendete", "gewendet" while a minority sill use "wendet", "wandt", "gewandt").


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## Hutschi

> I regards the strong conjugation system as still present in modern German.


 
Me too. The problem is, that the regularity of this older system is broken. You can find this when you compare different languages. And new words usually do not use it. 

German: K*o*mmen, k*a*m, gek*o*mmen 
Dutch: k*o*men, kw*a*m, gek*o*men
Dansk: k*o*mme, k*o*m, k*o*met
Swedish: k*o*mma, k*o*m, k*o*mit
English: c*o*me, c*a*me, c*o*me (The example is from Frederick Bodmer: "die Sprachen der Welt".)

In the past, there were 6 such conjugation forms (classes). 
- compare also: rennen, rannte, gerannt - schwimmen, schwamm, geschwommen - singen, sang, gesungen

You see, there was a vowel change - the conjugation changed a little bit, but kept parts and principles of the past. Bodmer says additionally: You can assume, that if a verb is strong in English, you can assume, it is strong in other Germanic languages, too. Usually old verbs are strong and new verbs are weak (follow the regular (weak) conjugation). 

Now a strong verb does not seem to be a regular verb anymore but you find regularities in it. In the far past the strong system was the regular system, as far as it is reconstructed.
The old conjugation system was the source of such systems in many languages. But during the time, it lost some of its regularities.

But the old conjugation classes seem to be slightly corrupted by sound changes.

So we do not consider it as "regular conjugation" but as "strong conjugation". 

The tendency is a movement to the "weak conjugation" system. Additionally very few verbs go the way from the weak to the strong conjugation. 

In some verbs, we have both possibilities at present time.

But the strong conjugation lost a lot of its regularity. And the list of stron verbs is almost closed.

Additionally not all irregular verbs are strong verbs. Some have other kinds of irregularity.


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## berndf

Hutschi said:


> German: K*o*mmen, k*a*m, gek*o*mmen


 
Where do you see the irregularity in _kommen_? It is in line with the 4th ablaut class. Or are you referring to the gemmination of _m_ in all forms except past tense in modern German?



> Additionally very few verbs go the way from the weak to the strong conjugation.


True, but very rare. Unfortunately, I can't remember any example.



> In some verbs, we have both possibilities at present time.


Yes, that is what I said as well.



> Additionally not all irregular verbs are strong verbs. Some have other kinds of irregularity.


 
Therfore I would not speak of regular and irregular verbs but of weak, strong and irregular verbs.


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## Hutschi

> Where do you see the irregularity in _kommen_? It is in line with the 4th ablaut class. Or are you referring to the gemmination of _m_ in all forms except past tense in modern German?


 I refered to the international words which have different vowels for parts of the table.


> Therefore I would not speak of regular and irregular verbs but of weak, strong and irregular verbs.


This is true. But if you compare the English text, in English they usually call it irregular verbs rather than to strong verbs. (And this was the method of the original poster if I understood well).

The question was:


> I would like to know how can understand when a verb is irregular _(meaning strong verbs and really irregular verbs)_: for example if ich nehmen becomes er nimmt what about erklaeren?


"Kommen" is in the 4th Ablaut class, but 1. who knows the ablaut classes when learning German as second language? 2. How many verbs are in each of these classes? And how would you compare this internationally? 3. I mentioned them before. They can indeed help to learn the words, if you consider them.

I would personally prefer to include these verbs into the class of regular verbs, but it is usually not done. Usually "weak" and "regular" verbs are considered as almost synonyme (with some exceptions). 

We can make a test.
Suppose:

"blieken" should be an old strong verb. How would you conjugate it?

If you read it for the first time (what I suppose, because I invented it right now for this purpose) would you conjugate it strong or weak?

What would be the forms?


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## berndf

Weather is is strong or weak you can't tell. That is clear. But if is were strong it would be 2nd class (paradigms: "bieten" or "biegen", "fliegen"):
"blieken", "blok", "gebloken".

But you are right in one respect: You might be tempted to use "liegen" as a paradigm and assign it to the 5th class ("blieken", "blak", "gebleken"). In order not to do that you would have to know that "liegen" is irregular because the lengthening of the "i" in "liegen" occured only in the 16th century and that the ablaut class is determined by its OHG form "liggan".


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## Hutschi

Indeed I would also use this class "Blieken, blok, gebloken". But as you already mentioned, you cannot know it exactly.

By the way, there are linguists doing such experiments, for example Steven Pinker. They want to know how we remember and use the regularities.


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## Robert_Hope

berndf said:


> But you are right in one respect: You might be tempted to use "liegen" as a paradigm and assign it to the 5th class ("blieken", "blak", "gebleken"). In order not to do that you would have to know that "liegen" is irregular because the lengthening of the "i" in "liegen" occured only in the 16th century and that the ablaut class is determined by its OHG form "liggan".



Informative, but I'm not sure that many people learning German would take comfort in knowing that you can conjugate irregular verbs easily and accurately, if you know that in the 16th centuary the old German verb form was XXXX!

I've just started learning irregular/strong/mixed/verbs that don't follow the common rules by groups. It does make it a lot easier but sometimes it still seems somewhat illogical (without having a background in 16th century German!). It seems that even within the group (class?) there is some difference. According to my grammar book, "laden" and "schaffen" are in the same group, yet "laden" has an irreg, 3rd person pressent form and "schaffen" doesn't. While I can see the changes in the other vowels are similar, it's not, to a learner with no 16th century German knowledge to back them up, obvious that they're "the same". 

(I speak here with the point of view of a normal learner - not an expert linguist!!)

Why do these irregular forms survive? Clearly, if someone said "ich bin gefahrt" (FALSCH - bitte nicht lernen!!) oder "ich schreibte  einen Brief" it is logically correct, even if, for now, it sounds strange to the ears....


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## berndf

Robert_Hope said:


> Informative, but I'm not sure that many people learning German would take comfort in knowing that you can conjugate irregular verbs easily and accurately, if you know that in the 16th centuary the old German verb form was XXXX!


Absolutely. That is why "liegen" is irregular in modern German because you cannot be aware of those things unless you have some training. I also had to look it up in the Grimm's in order to know why it is irregular.



> I've just started learning irregular/strong/mixed/verbs that don't follow the common rules by groups. It does make it a lot easier but sometimes it still seems somewhat illogical (without having a background in 16th century German!). It seems that even within the group (class?) there is some difference. According to my grammar book, "laden" and "schaffen" are in the same group, yet "laden" has an irreg, 3rd person pressent form and "schaffen" doesn't. While I can see the changes in the other vowels are similar, it's not, to a learner with no 16th century German knowledge to back them up, obvious that they're "the same".
> (I speak here with the point of view of a normal learner - not an expert linguist!!)


Irregular 2nd and 3rd present indicatives are yet an other complication. As far as I know, ablaut classes don't help you there. We hanvn't yet spoken about subjunctives, by the way. There are some irregularities as well.



> Why do these irregular forms survive? Clearly, if someone said "ich bin gefahrt" (FALSCH - bitte nicht lernen!!) oder "ich schreibte  einen Brief" it is logically correct, even if, for now, it sounds strange to the ears....


It seems German has fewer strong verbs left than English (if you don't count derived verbs like "_ver_laden"). There is a strong tendency towards weak conjugations in German. It must have lost around 50 strong verbs during the last 100-150 years. I guess nowadays most native speakers wouldn't even know what e.g. "Er boll" meant. The modern form is "Er bellte".


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## PacoBajito

I agree that this kind of discussion is not usefull for an anfaenger as me, that has to avoid to use words from the luther's bible . anyway it was very interesting to read for a classics student; the only problem is that maybe it turned too much from the start and it is not very useful according to the wordreference rules


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## berndf

You are right. You need more down to earth tips than we have given you. Let me try to provide some.

1) If you want to learn German you need the "Duden", no way around it! At least volume 1:"Die deutsche Rechtschreibung". If you look at the entry under "nehmen" you will find:
"*Neh|men*; du nimmst, er nimmt; ich nahm, du nahmst; du nämest; genommen; nimm!..."
This is to be read as follows: Infinitive is "nehmen", present indicative and subjunctive are regular and therefore not mentioned except 2nd and 3rd persons singular indicative ("du nimmst, er nimmt"). Past is "nahm". If you know the 1st person form the others are clear except for the 2nd singular which could be "nahmst" or "nahmest"; therefore it is stated. From "Du nämest", you can deduce all past subjunctive forms; therefore only this one is stated. Past participle is "genommen". Imperative is irregular in singular ("nimm!") and therefore explicitly stated.

As long as you are not sufficiently familiar with regular German conjugations and this is to much "shorthand" for you, the German edition of "Wiktionary" has the complete conjugation tables for many verbs: http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/nehmen and http://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/nehmen_(Konjugation)

I hope this has been more immediately helpful than our very academic discussion.


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## Forero

Clearly English and German irregular verbs have a lot in common, but for some reason, I get the impression that Italian verbs with irregular preterites and past participles have a tendency to correspond to German verbs with irregularities: arso - gebrannt, volli - will, trassi - zog, corso - gelaufen, detti - gab, usw.  Is it just because these are the most-used verbs in the languages?


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## berndf

English and German strong verbs descend from proto-Germanic strong verbs and there similarities are certainly no accident.

I while ago, unfortunately I don't remember where, I read a study about the development of strong verbs in Germanic languages the outcome of which was that the more frequent a verb is the more it resists the tedency towards regularized conjugations. It is very likely that you find the same phenomenon in Italian, too. Latin also had more irregular verbs than modern Italian. And in the examples you mentioned the Latin roots are clear, e.g. _trassi_ is derived from traxi and _x_ to _ss_ is a normal sound shift from Latin to Italian.


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## Hutschi

berndf said:


> I while ago, unfortunately I don't remember where, I read a study about the development of strong verbs in Germanic languages the outcome of which was that the more frequent a verb is the more it resists the tedency towards regularized conjugations.


 
When I remember well, one of the sources is "The language instinct" by Stephen Pinker.

The second is: if a verb is new, it usually is a regular verb (in Case of German it follows the "weak" conjugation.



> Paco wrote: I agree that this kind of discussion is not usefull for an anfaenger as me, that has to avoid to use words from the luther's bible . anyway it was very interesting to read for a classics student; the only problem is that maybe it turned too much from the start and it is not very useful according to the wordreference rules


 
I think, the direct answers to your questions where in the first entries.
The later discussion gives background information, it may be usefull for learning by understanding the problems. So I think, it was on topic. 

If you understand that English and German irregular strong verbs have the same root with some sound changes, it could help to learn the German ones easier. If you know that the most of the most frequently used verbs are irregular, you can take them from a list and just learn them. It is a (almost) closed list. So it will not be endless. If you know, that you can group them, because they where regular forms of another conjugation system using ablauts, this makes it easier to learn. Thirst learn the rules (of the "irregular" strong forms) - later the exceptions. I hope this helps. 

For me it helped a lot for learning modern English to learn about the Old and Middle English forms. It was much easier to memorize when knowing the history.


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## Robert_Hope

berndf said:


> Absolutely. That is why "liegen" is irregular in modern German because you cannot be aware of those things unless you have some training. I also had to look it up in the Grimm's in order to know why it is irregular.



Ahh! I had wrongly assumed that you (all) just knew this type of stuff! It pleases me that you would also have to look such things up!



berndf said:


> Irregular 2nd and 3rd present indicatives are yet an other complication. As far as I know, *ablaut classes don't help you there*. We hanvn't yet spoken about subjunctives, by the way. There are some irregularities as well.



That's a relief! I'm working on subjunctives myself at the moment - wish me luck!




berndf said:


> It seems German has fewer strong verbs left than English (if you don't count derived verbs like "_ver_laden"). There is a strong tendency towards weak conjugations in German. It must have lost around 50 strong verbs during the last 100-150 years. I guess nowadays most native speakers wouldn't even know what e.g. "Er boll" meant. The modern form is "Er bellte".



So we could see a day when the number of irreuglar verbs is down to about 5 or so? I'd assume forms like "sein, war, gewesen" and other common one's are used too often to change.


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## Hutschi

Robert_Hope said:


> So we could see a day when the number of irregular verbs is down to about 5 or so? I'd assume forms like "sein, war, gewesen" and other common one's are used too often to change.


 
I do not think so. (Depending on what you mean with "we".)

It is a very slow process, but it could become faster when languages are mixed.


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## PacoBajito

I think, the direct answers to your questions where in the first entries.
The later discussion gives background information, it may be usefull for learning by understanding the problems. So I think, it was on topic. 

If you understand that English and German irregular strong verbs have the same root with some sound changes, it could help to learn the German ones easier. 

I do agree and i said it was very interessing...it was just a bit confusing for an anfaengen even if i think it will be very useful too in a second time


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## Sepia

Hutschi said:


> Hi, there is no general rule but tendencies:
> 
> 1. The most verbs are regular.
> 
> ...


 

Interesting conclusion. However, I cannot imagine on what you base this ...


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## berndf

Certainly. Most German verbs are weak. Strong verbs are a small minority though they are the more frequent ones, by and large. Although there are exceptions, most weak verbs are regular.


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## Hutschi

Sepia said:


> Interesting conclusion. However, I cannot imagine on what you base this ...


The number of verbs is much larger than 188. 188 is the number of irregular verbs in my dictionary. There are some more, not in the table. But there exist much more verbs in the German language. You only need to count the verbs in some pages. The irregular verbs are in an almost closed list. 

If you build a new verb, it will be regular, at least mostly.

Example: telefonieren (It did not exist yet 200 years ago.)
I suppose, that the German language has more than 1000 verbs which is much more than for example 200. Even if the number of 200 is unterestimated there are much more regular verbs. 

There exists a book "4000 deutsche Verben". That means that more than 4000 verbs exist.
I'm sure that more than 200 irregular verbs exist. But not many more.

By the way:
Back to the first topic:

There are groups of verbs which are all regular.

Words with foreign roots (loan words) ending with "...ieren" and new words derived from other words:
Explodieren, marschieren, exerzieren, musizieren, harbunieren, addieren, subtrahieren, multipizieren, dividieren, radizieren, abstrahieren, parlieren, schwadronieren, reduzieren, applizieren, executieren, sondieren, karikieren, ventilieren, grillieren (Schweiz), parkieren (Schweiz) ..., kandieren, kandidieren, faszinieren, garnieren ...
By the way - the "...ieren" verbs do not add the "ge" in the participle.
Compare: Ich habe studiert, ich habe *ge*lernt.
This list does not include old German words like "frieren" (which has strong conjugation).


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## berndf

Hutschi said:


> Words with foreign roots (loan words) ending with "...ieren" and new words derived from other words:....


 
I believe this is true only for verbs of romance origin. As far as I know, the ending _-ieren_ was originally (16th-17th century) used to assimilate French verbs but later(?) extended to other verbs of romance or Latin origin (e.g. _saldieren_ from Italian _saldare_). By contrast, verbs of English origin are normally assimilated by simply adding _-en_ or (_-n_ if already ending on _-e_). This also explains some of the differences between German and Swiss usage: _parken-parkieren_, _grillen-grillieren_. Germans would most likely associate these verbs with the English verbs _to park_ and _to grill_ while Swiss Germans would associate these verbs probably more with the French verbs _parquer_ and _griller_.


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## Hutschi

Indeed, they seem to have French or Latin origin. But I was not sure whether there are others, too.

Are there other groups which are usually regular?

I think, also the words which came from other languages during the last centuries:

In Bernd's example:
parken - parkte - geparkt (from English)
grillen - grillte - gegrillt

"Denglische" Neologismen are regular, too:
downloaden, downloadete, gedownloadet 
posten, postete, geposted 
(I'm not sure whether this comes into the standard, but it gives the principle and is used in forums.)

Are there other groups we can recognize which helps learning?


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## Greenops

Is there any way to know if a verb's conjugation is irregular? Such as wissen.


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## Wroclaw

Welcome, Greenops!

Unfortunately, to "know" if the conjugation is irregular, you pretty much have to look them all up. On our dictionary here, if you look up "wissen," you will see that it is an "unregelmäßiges ... Verb" which means "irregular verb":
"wissen"
If you are a novice in German, I might recommend the Hueber online dictionary, which has explanations and sample forms in English. Here, for example, they show you the main forms of wissen so you can see _how_ it is irregular:
"wissen"
Here are a couple of observations I've been able to make about irregular verbs from English to German:
1) If it's irregular in English, chances are it's irregular in German too: sing/singen, bring/bringen, sleep/schlafen, etc. This pattern does not always hold true (help/helfen), but it is very helpful.
2) These irregular verbs actually were regular a couple thousand years ago! They come from an older system of verb formation (ablaut) and typically represent an older layer of vocabulary. It's sort of a joke, but it's helpful to think that, if a caveman could do it, it's likely to be an irregular verb in German (and English): essen, stehen, rennen, schlafen, laden, springen, schwimmen, etc.... Again, not a rule, but a helfpul guideline and a way to remember these verbs.

Viel Glück!!!


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## Hutschi

Welcome, from me, too.

Eine Liste vom Duden findet man hier:

http://www.duden.de/deutsche_sprach...3-411-04047-6&begriff=&bereich=&id=108&nid=22

Best regards 
Bernd


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## Derselbe

We already had thread on that issue here.

The fact that irregular verbs sometimes become regular verbs after a while and the other way round proofs that it's not possible to formulate a rule.


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## Hutschi

Hutschi said:


> When I remember well, one of the sources is "The language instinct" by Stephen Pinker.


I found the source.

It is Steven Pinker, "Words and Rules".


If a word is not in the internal dictionary of "Strong verbs", it will be usually build regular.

Children often add regular endings to strong verbs in a certain age ("gesingt" instead of "gesungen").


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