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German · Verb Tables · Intermediate

Leben Conjugation

leben means "to live" in German. Present: ich lebe, du lebst, er / sie / es lebt, wir leben, ihr lebt, sie / Sie leben. Below: all 15 tenses we teach, with examples.

Present Präsens

Stem + -e, -st, -t, -en, -t, -en. Used for current facts, habits, and (with a time word) planned future events.

Present continuous Verlaufsform (umgangssprachlich)

German has no grammatical present continuous. Standard German adds "gerade" ("right now") to the plain present; colloquial spoken German (common in the west and increasingly everywhere) uses "sein + am + Infinitiv": "ich bin am Arbeiten". Only the "gerade" forms are considered fully standard and used here.

Simple past Präteritum

Stem + -te-, -test, -te, -ten, -tet, -ten. Used mainly in writing (narratives, news, reports) and for the common auxiliaries and modal verbs even in speech.

Present perfect Perfekt

haben (or sein for motion/change-of-state verbs) + past participle, participle last in the clause. This is the normal past tense of everyday spoken German, for both completed and once-ongoing actions.

Pluperfect Plusquamperfekt

hatte/war (imperfect of the auxiliary) + past participle. Marks an event that had already happened before another past event.

Near future Präsens mit Zukunftsbedeutung

German normally expresses a near or planned future with the plain present tense plus a time expression (gleich, morgen, nächste Woche); Futur I sounds formal or adds emphasis for near events.

Simple future Futur I

werden + infinitive, infinitive last in the clause. Used for predictions, promises, and assumptions about the present ("er wird wohl arbeiten" = he's probably working) more than for plain future facts, which usually just use the present.

Future perfect Futur II

werden + past participle + haben/sein (perfect infinitive), all at the end of the clause. Marks something that will already be finished by a future point, or a confident guess about the past.

Conditional Konjunktiv II (würde-Form)

würde + infinitive. This is the everyday substitute for the Konjunktiv II Präteritum of weak verbs (see Subjunctive: Imperfect), whose own forms are identical to the simple past and so are avoided in speech.

Conditional perfect Konjunktiv II Plusquamperfekt

hätte/wäre + past participle. Expresses what would have happened under different, now-impossible past conditions.

Present Konjunktiv I Präsens

Infinitive stem + -e, -est, -e, -en, -et, -en (same endings for weak and strong verbs). Used for reporting what someone said in the present.

Present perfect Konjunktiv I Perfekt

habe/sei (Konjunktiv I of the auxiliary) + past participle. Used for reporting what someone said had already happened.

Imperfect Konjunktiv II Präteritum

Stem + -te- + the same endings as Konjunktiv I (identical, for a weak verb, to its plain simple past). Expresses a present hypothesis contrary to fact; in speech this is normally replaced by würde + infinitive, shown above as the Conditional.

Pluperfect Konjunktiv II Plusquamperfekt

hätte/wäre + past participle. Expresses a past hypothesis contrary to fact — identical in form to the Conditional perfect above, since German uses the same construction for both functions.

Imperative Imperativ

Informal singular: stem alone (drop -st). Informal plural: same as the ihr-form of the present. Formal and "let's": present-tense wir/Sie-form with the verb moved first. Add "nicht" anywhere in the sentence to negate.

Examples

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