50 Key German Strong Verbs and How They Work

German “strong” verbs are considered strong from a grammar perspective—that is, strong verbs squash regular German conjugation rules and instead use their own.

Here’s a quick guide on how these work, plus a list of 50 must-know German strong verbs to memorize.

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What Are Strong German Verbs?

Let’s first define strong verbs—as well as their counterparts, weak German verbs.

Weak verbs conjugate according to systematic rules, which is why they’re also referred to as “regular verbs.”

By contrast, strong verbs don’t play by any particular rules when it comes to conjugations. They conjugate irregularly, which means they’re also called “irregular verbs.”

Let’s take a look at the difference between strong and weak verbs with examples first in English:

When you talk about having run yesterday, do you say “I runned” or “I ran?”

If “to run” were a weak verb, you would say “runned,” because you would use the core verb (run) and add the regular past tense verb ending (-ed).

However, “to run” is a strong verb, which means it has its own, irregular conjugation rules. So “I runned” is wrong. You would say, “I ran.”

German has a similar structure to English when it comes to strong verbs.

How Weak Verbs Work in German

Again, it can be easiest to understand strong verbs by first comparing them to weak verbs.

As noted above, weak verbs follow systematic, predictable conjugation rules. This makes them particularly easy to learn.

You don’t have to memorize different forms. You just need to remember which verbs are weak.

Let’s use the weak German verb  fragen (to ask) as an example. The regular present tense verb endings are: -e, -st, -t, -en, -t, -en.

ich frage  (I ask)

du fragst (you ask)

er/sie/es fragt (he/she/it asks)

wir fragen (we ask)

ihr fragt (you all ask)

sie fragen  (they ask)

To conjugate the past participle for weak verbs, you put “ge-” in front of the verb core and “-t” at the end.

The past participle for fragen is  gefragt (asked).

To conjugate in the third person imperfect, or simple past tense, you add “-te” to the verb stem.

For fragen, the third person imperfect is  fragte (asked).

How Strong Verbs Work in German

Strong verbs, however, don’t follow regular conjugation rules and often have a change in the verb stem (the verb stem is the infinitive, or dictionary form of the verb, with “-en” removed from the end).

For example, to get the past participle of the verb  gehen (to go) we need to change the stem and tack “–en” on the end.

gehen past participle:  gegangen

The geh stem has been changed to gang.

To conjugate the simple past tense of strong German verbs, you’ll often change the verb stem and not add anything at all.

The third person imperfect form of gehen is  ging (went).

Simply remembering which verbs are strong verbs will help you quite a bit, even before you learn the correct conjugations.

50 Essential German Strong Verbs

Here’s the good news: most German verbs are weak verbs. That means you can rely on your systematic conjugations for most verb usage. 

But to get you started on the basics, here is a table of 50 commonly-used German strong verbs. The verbs below are also provided with their respective present, simple past and past participle forms. Note that the conjugations are based on the er / sie / das articles.

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Grammar Hacks for Identifying Strong Verbs

Strong verbs, unfortunately, just need to be memorized. However, I have a few tricks you can use to make things easier. They came incredibly handy during my beginner German classes, and I bet they will be for you as well!

The Past Participle and Third Person Imperfect Test

The most common places you’ll see verb stem changes when working with strong verbs is in the past participle or the third person imperfect—which is why we use those two conjugations to test whether verbs are strong or weak.

Take a look at these phrases formed from the verb  sagen (to say). Do you think sagen is a strong or weak verb?

ich habe gesagt (I have said)

er sagte  (he said)

Notice that the past participle follows the “ge- + verb stem + -t” rule. Then check the third person imperfect and look for a verb stem change. In this case, there’s none. So sagen is a weak verb.

The English Equivalent Test

Verbs with English cognates are often the same type of verb in German.

For example, “to laugh” is a weak verb in English. You say “he laughs” and “I laughed.” See how the stem of the verb doesn’t change? In German,  lachen (to laugh) is also a weak verb.

Meanwhile, “begin” is a strong verb in English. You don’t say “he beginned,” you say “he began.” The German equivalent, beginnen, is also a strong verb.

You’ve probably noticed in the table above that there are more than a few cognates that follow this pattern.

How Mixed Verbs Work in German

There is, in fact, a third category of verbs.

Mixed verbs have qualities of both strong and weak verbs. In other words, these verbs enjoy the convenience of those regular, weak verb endings but they also have verb stem changes.

Check out this example:

haben (to have): ich habe gehabt (I have had),  er hatte (he had)

In this case, we have a verb that follows weak verb ending rules, but we can also see a verb stem change in the simple past tense (hab becomes hat).

Now, speaking from personal experience, it’s very easy to mix up (heh) mixed verbs with solely strong verbs. For simplicity’s sake, and because many learning resources do the same, you should consider mixed verbs as its own separate group.

Resources to Master German Verb Types

Memorization relies heavily on repetition and not just spending a long time focusing on something once. Fortunately, for those of us who carry smartphones, there are tons of good apps for memorizing sets of information.

You can use your standard notepad app to keep lists of tricky German verbs, and check it while you’re waiting in line at the market or standing at a bus stop. You can also take advantage of flashcard apps like Quizlet, which have many lists available to help memorize German verb sets. If you can’t find the ideal list you’re looking for, you can always make your own, too.

There’s also FluentU for learning German verbs in context, as they’re used by native speakers.

 

To summarize, you can often identify German strong verbs when they:

• Don’t follow regular conjugation patterns
• Have a verb stem change (usually a vowel)
• Have English cognates that are also irregular

Without too much trouble, you’ll find that you already know how to use many verbs if they’re conjugated regularly, and you’ll have more time to focus on those cases that need special attention because of irregularities in how those verbs are conjugated.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)