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TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > German > Present tense

Present tense

The present tense of the verb is generally translated as either "I play", "I am playing" or "I do play". Note that there is no way of distinguishing between these ideas in German; they are all formed in the same way. To form this form of the verb, take the stem of the infinitive, and add the following endings, remembering the vowel change in the du and er forms of irregular verbs.

Notes:

• Verbs such as arbeiten or reden, whose stems end in t or d, gain an extra -e- in the forms of the verb which would be hard to pronounce otherwise:
  
  • du arbeitest, du redest
  • er arbeitet, er redet
  • ihr arbeitet, ihr redet
  The other forms are unaffected.
• Verbs such as lächeln or wandern, whose infinitives end in -ln or -rn, are conjugated similarly to normal present tense verbs; the stem is formed by removing the final n. There is an optional first person singular form:
  • ich lächle, ich wandre
  The wir and sie forms, like the infinitive, do not take an extra e:
  • wir lächeln, wir wandern
  • sie lächeln, sie wandern