Doing words for now and for the past

Books tell a story in the one-word past: war, kam, sah, sagte. Learn nine doing words in both their now and their then shapes, and see how German prints somebody speaking.

≈ 4 min of reading · Practise at your own pace

What’s in this chapter

Books narrate in the one-word past: war, kam, sah, sagtevar, kahm, zah, ZAHK-tuh.
Ordinary verbs bolt -te onto the end; -te means the past almost every time.
The common old verbs change their vowel instead, as English does in sing and sang.
With dudoo a verb ends in -st; with erair it ends in -t.
German quotes open low and close high; after a quote the doing word comes before the speaker.

Somebody says something, somebody asks, somebody sees. A handful of doing words carry every page of every fable, and books print them in the one-word past.

The doing words every story uses

Books tell a story in the past. Each row gives you one doing word twice, once for now and once for what already happened.

Now	Then
er sagtair zahkt“he says”	er sagteair ZAHK-tuh“he said”
fragtfrahkt“asks”	fragteFRAHK-tuh“asked”
antwortetANT-vor-tet“answers”	antworteteANT-vor-te-tuh“answered”
siehtzeet“sees”	sahzah“saw”
istist“is”	warvar“was”
gehtgayt“goes”	gingging“went”
kommtkomt“comes”	kamkahm“came”
fälltfelt“falls”	fielfeel“fell”
nimmtnimt“takes”	nahmnahm“took”

Cover the right column and guess. Half are English words in disguise: kam and came, sah and saw, fiel and fell, war and was.

Two ways a doing word shows the past

There are two past shapes to recognise. Compare the dictionary word on the left with its past form on the right.

sagenZAH-gen“to say”

sagteZAHK-tuh“said”

Ordinary verbs bolt on -te, and -te on a doing word means the past almost every time — the one German ending that carries meaning.

sehenZAY-en“to see”

sahzah“saw”

The common old verbs change their vowel instead, as English does in sing and sang.

The ending tells you who did it

The end of a doing word changes with the person doing it. Read down each column and watch the last letters.

With	To go	To be
ichich“I”	geheGAY-uh“I go”	binbin“I am”
dudoo“you”	gehstgayst“you go”	bistbist“you are”
erair“he”	gehtgayt“he goes”	istist“he is”

-st for dudoo, -t for erair — the pattern for nearly every verb. “To be” refuses, as it does in English. The full set is in the verb lookup.

I am hungry.

Ich habe Hunger.

ich HAH-buh HOONG-uh

Word for word: I have hunger — the normal way to say it. HungerHOONG-uh is a thing, so it wears a capital letter.

How German prints speech

German marks speech in a way that looks wrong to an English eye. Compare the English line with the German one below it.

“Good morning,” said the fox.

„Guten Morgen“, sagte der Fuchs.GOO-ten MOR-gen, ZAHK-tuh dair fooks

The opening mark sits low, the closing one high — it looks like a mistake and is not. After a quotation the doing word comes before the speaker, exactly like English “said the fox”.

Now, then, and who said it

Der Fuchs sah einen Vogel.
The past shape is one vowel from the English word.
Show answer +Hide answer −
Der Fuchs sah einen Vogel.dair fooks zah INE-en FOH-gul“The fox saw a bird.”
„Guten Abend“, sagte der Bär.
Read the low mark as an opening quote.
Show answer +Hide answer −
„Guten Abend“, sagte der Bär.GOO-ten AH-bent, ZAHK-tuh dair bair““Good evening,” said the bear.”

Come back to these chapters whenever you need them.All German chapters ↗