Präsens: Your first sentences using the present tense in German

Today we will take a look into how we can build easy sentences using the present tense in German. Once you learn this simple pattern, you can build hundreds of simple sentences right away.

The most used pronouns

In our examples today we will be using only the following pronouns to refer to the person that does the action. These are the most used pronouns in casual conversations between two people.

Ich = I

Du = You (informal, one person)

Er = He

Sie = She

An easy way to get the verb stem

Every German verb has a base stem and an ending. The ending depends on the pronoun, but the stem never changes.

To see how this works, let's take the verb lernen (to learn). If we remove the "-en" at the end of the verb, we get the stem "lern-".

Before we start talking about the present tense, look into these common verbs and write their stems:

Use the verb stem to create the present tense

Add the new ending based on who is doing the action. This is the pattern:

Ich (I) + STEM + -e: Ich lerne

Du (You) + STEM + -st: Du lernst

Er (He) + STEM + t: Er lernt

Sie (She) + STEM + t: Sie lernt.

Notice that we use the same ending for "er" and "sie".

Let's do some practice with the verb "kommen":

And now with the verb "wohnen":

Easy!

I hope you got everything right.

To make sure you have learnt something useful in this lesson, let's put these verbs and more into simple sentences in a conversation. You will encounter a verb that we haven't seen in this lesson, which is heißen (to call yourself).

Try to fill the gaps in the following sentences using the present tense in German as explained in this article: