German Strong, Weak and Mixed Verbs Explained

Each of our 600 most common German verbs has its own page in our German conjugation tables, with every form in 11 tenses, and each page names the verb's type. The label links to its section below. Weak verbs make up more than half of the 600, yet only 2 of the 20 most common verbs are weak. So the verbs you'll use first are mostly the ones that break the regular pattern.

The five types at a glance

Look up gehen, denken or können in the Duden dictionary and all three are labeled “unregelmäßiges Verb” (irregular verb). Duden gives that label to every verb that isn't weak, and English courses often do the same. We split the group in four, because most of it follows rules you can learn, and keep the word “irregular” for the eight verbs that follow none of those rules.

Which type is the most common?

That depends on what you count. Count verbs, and weak wins, with 318 of our 600, more than half. Count how often they're used, and weak falls close to last. Our list is ranked by how often each verb occurs in film and TV subtitles, and only 2 of the top 20 are weak: sagen and machen.

In order, the top 20 are sein, können, werden, haben, wollen, sagen, sollen, sehen, machen, lassen, müssen, denken, kommen, tun, mögen, finden, gehen, geben, wissen and verstehen. That makes 7 strong verbs, 5 modals, 5 irregular verbs, 1 mixed verb (denken) and the 2 weak ones.

Further down the list, weak verbs catch up, but not all the way. The top 100 has 51 strong verbs against 32 weak, plus 6 mixed, 6 modal and 5 irregular.

So weak verbs make up most of the vocabulary you'll add over time, while the verbs you'll hear on your first day are mostly the other types.

Weak verbs

Weak verbs are the regular ones, which is why our verb pages label them regular (weak). The stem keeps its vowel in every form. The Präteritum adds -te to the stem, and the Partizip II puts ge- in front and -t at the end. Here is machen, to make or do, with three more:

The present tense is just as regular: du machst, er macht, du sagst, er sagt. Weak is also the type German uses for new verbs, so a verb you've never seen is more likely to be weak than anything else.

The extra -e-. When the stem ends in -d or -t, or in a consonant plus m or n, an -e- goes in before the ending. Arbeiten gives arbeitete and gearbeitet, reden gives redete and geredet, and öffnen gives öffnete and geöffnet. Of our 318 weak verbs, 46 do this.

-ieren verbs. Verbs that end in the suffix -ieren, such as studieren and passieren, are all weak, and their Partizip II has no ge-: studiert, passiert. Our list has 23 of them. Verlieren (to lose) and frieren (to freeze) only look like them. In those two, the -ier- belongs to the stem, and both are strong.

Prefixes. Two kinds of prefix move or remove the ge-, and they work the same way in every type. Inseparable prefixes (be-, emp-, ent-, er-, ge-, ver- and zer-) take no ge- at all: verstanden, bekommen. With the -ieren verbs, that makes 166 of our 600 verbs whose Partizip II has no added ge-. Separable prefixes, such as an- and mit-, put the ge- between the prefix and the stem, so anrufen gives angerufen. Our 600 include 216 separable verbs.

Strong verbs

A strong verb changes its stem vowel in the past, a change grammar books call Ablaut. The Präteritum has no -te, and the Partizip II ends in -en: finden (to find) gives fand and gefunden. Gehen (to go) changes a consonant as well: ging, gegangen.

Our 600 include 246 strong verbs, but there are fewer to learn than that suggests. Most are compounds that conjugate like their base verb, as ankommen (to arrive) and bekommen (to get) follow kommen. The 246 rest on about 90 base verbs.

The vowel changes aren't random either. They fall into patterns, and eleven of them cover 218 of the 246 strong verbs:

The other 28 follow smaller patterns, often a single base verb and its compounds. Among them are laufen (lief, gelaufen), rufen (rief, gerufen), sitzen (saß, gesessen) and beginnen (begann, begonnen).

Three strong verbs pair a weak-looking Präteritum with a strong participle. Hauen (to hit) gives haute and gehauen, backen (to bake) gives backte and gebacken, and abhauen follows hauen. Some books call these mixed in a second sense. Our tables count them as strong, and the -en participle is the part to remember.

A prefix doesn't change the pattern. Verstehen (to understand) follows stehen: verstand, verstanden. Anrufen (to call) follows rufen: rief an, angerufen. So once you know a base verb's three forms (infinitive, Präteritum and Partizip II), you know its compounds' forms too, though not always their auxiliary. Watch for pairs that only look related. Hängen, meaning to be hanging, is strong: hing, gehangen. Aufhängen, to hang something up, is weak: hängte auf, aufgehängt.

Present-tense vowel changes

Many strong verbs change their vowel in the present tense too, but only in two forms: du and er/sie/es. Fahren (to drive, to travel) gives du fährst and er fährt, and geben (to give) gives du gibst and er gibt. The ich form and every plural form keep the vowel of the infinitive.

Of the 246 strong verbs, 115 do this, a little under half. These are the changes:

No weak or mixed verb in our 600 changes its vowel in the present. So if the er form has a different vowel from the infinitive, the verb is strong, modal or irregular. It doesn't work the other way around. Kommen and gehen are strong, yet er kommt and er geht keep their vowel.

The du-imperative, the command form for du, splits the changes in two. Verbs that change e to i or ie keep the new vowel there: gib, nimm, lies. Verbs that change a to ä or au to äu drop it: fahr or fahre, lauf or laufe. So it's du gibst and gib, but du fährst and fahr.

Mixed verbs

Mixed verbs change their vowel like strong verbs but take the weak endings: -te in the Präteritum and ge-...-t in the Partizip II. Denken (to think) gives dachte and gedacht, kennen (to know someone) gives kannte and gekannt, and bringen (to bring) gives brachte and gebracht. Denken and bringen change a consonant as well.

The group is small. It rests on 8 base verbs: bringen, denken, kennen, brennen (to burn), wenden (to turn), nennen (to name), rennen (to run) and senden (to send). With their compounds, they make the 22 mixed verbs in our list, and bringen alone has 9 of them, including mitbringen, umbringen and verbringen.

Senden, wenden and wenden's compound verwenden (to use) have two sets of forms, and our tables list both: sendete or sandte, gesendet or gesandt, wendete or wandte, gewendet or gewandt. Meaning can decide between them. When senden means to broadcast, only sendete and gesendet are used. Duden gives wandte and gewandt as the more common forms of wenden, except when you turn a car around or turn something over. Then only the forms with e will do: sie wendete mit dem Auto (she turned the car around). Both verbs are slowly drifting toward the plain weak forms.

Modal verbs

German has six modal verbs: können (can), müssen (must), dürfen (may), sollen (should), wollen (want to) and mögen (like). All six are in the top 50 of our list, and they follow the same rules.

No ending for ich and er. A normal verb gives er macht, but a modal gives er kann, er muss, er darf, and the ich form is the same. The reason is old. In the present, modals use the endings a strong verb uses in the Präteritum, and a strong Präteritum has no ending for ich and er either: er ging, er kam.

One vowel in the singular, another in the plural. Können gives du kannst and er kann, and müssen gives du musst and er muss, while the plural keeps the vowel of the infinitive. Darf, mag and will work the same way. Sollen is the exception and keeps its o: er soll.

No umlaut in the Präteritum. The umlaut disappears in the past: konnte, musste, durfte, mochte. The Konjunktiv II (the subjunctive) puts it back: könnte, müsste, dürfte, möchte. Sollen and wollen have no umlaut to lose, so they give sollte and wollte in both.

That last form explains möchten. Ich möchte (I would like) is the Konjunktiv II of mögen, so our tables show it on the mögen page, not on a page of its own, though some books count möchten as a seventh modal.

The double infinitive. Modals are rarely used in the Perfekt (present perfect), even in speech, so the Präteritum is the past form to learn first. When a modal does appear in the Perfekt with another verb, it takes the form of its infinitive instead of its participle: ich habe das nicht glauben können (I couldn't believe that). The participle gekonnt appears when the modal stands alone: er hat seine Aufgaben nicht gekonnt (he couldn't do his homework). Our tables show gekonnt, gemusst and the other participles, which are the stand-alone forms.

Irregular verbs

Our tables call eight verbs irregular: sein, haben, werden, tun and wissen, plus three compounds that conjugate like them, wehtun (to hurt), vorhaben (to plan) and loswerden (to get rid of). The five base verbs are all in the top 20, so you'll need them early.

Sein (to be) is the most irregular of them, and grammars often call it the only completely irregular German verb. Du bist, er ist, war and gewesen barely look like one verb.

Haben (to have) takes weak endings but loses its b in places: du hast, er hat, hatte, and then gehabt with the b back.

Werden (to become) goes its own way: du wirst, er wird, wurde, geworden, and worden in the passive. It also helps form the future tense and the Konjunktiv II with würde.

Tun (to do) changes its vowel like a strong verb, tut, tat, getan, but no other verb in our 600 follows its pattern except its own compound wehtun, so our tables keep it with the irregular verbs.

Wissen (to know a fact) is the verb many lists file as mixed, because wusste and gewusst have a vowel change with weak endings. We put it here because its present tense works like a modal's: ich weiß, er weiß, with no ending and a different vowel from the plural. That comes from its history. Wissen is a preterite-present verb, from the same old family as most of the modals, but it isn't a modal itself.

Plenty of strong verbs look irregular too. Finden, fand, gefunden seems odd on its own, yet it shares its vowels with trinken, singen and 12 more verbs in our list. These eight don't fit the rules of any other type cleanly, so they're the ones to learn one at a time.

haben or sein

Every verb forms its Perfekt (present perfect) with haben or sein, and each of our verb pages shows which. Use sein for movement from one place to another (er ist gegangen, er ist gekommen) and for a change of state (er ist gestorben, er ist geworden). Sein and bleiben take sein too: er ist gewesen, er ist geblieben. Use haben for everything else, including every verb with a direct object.

The rule follows the meaning, so one verb can take both. A verb of movement such as fahren takes haben when it has a direct object: ich habe das Auto gefahren (I drove the car), but er ist nach Berlin gefahren (he traveled to Berlin). Fliegen, schwimmen and reiten can also take haben. Our tables show fahren and these three with sein, for the sense of going somewhere, so keep the haben use in mind. Where both are standard, as with ziehen, our tables print both.

Prefixes can change it too. Kommen takes sein, but bekommen (to get) takes haben. And a few verbs vary by region: stehen and sitzen take sein in southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Our tables give haben, as standard German does elsewhere: er hat gestanden.

The type doesn't decide the auxiliary, but strong verbs take sein far more often. Of our 246 strong verbs, 84 can take sein, about a third. Only 20 of the 318 weak verbs can, among them passieren (ist passiert) and reisen (ist gereist). Among the rest, 2 of the 22 mixed verbs can (rennen and verbrennen), 3 of the 8 irregular verbs can (sein, werden and loswerden), and none of the modals can. So learn each participle with its auxiliary: er ist gegangen, not just gegangen.

In what order to learn them

1. The weak pattern. The pattern of machen, machte, gemacht covers 318 of the 600 verbs and most of the verbs you'll add later.
2. The irregular and modal verbs, by heart. Sein, haben, werden, tun and wissen, and the six modals, are all in the top 50. Learn them one verb at a time, the way you'd learn vocabulary.
3. Strong verbs, most common first. Learn each one as its three forms, plus the er form when it changes and the auxiliary: fahren, er fährt, fuhr, ist gefahren.
4. Strong verbs by pattern. As your list grows, group the verbs that share vowels, such as the i-a-u verbs finden, trinken and singen.
5. The mixed verbs. There are only 8 base verbs. Once you know brachte and dachte, kannte and nannte work the same way.

To practice one type at a time, the German verb conjugation worksheet generator prints exercises for the verbs and tenses you choose, and the German verb conjugation quiz asks for one form at a time and marks each answer. Both can filter the list to strong verbs. Put nehmen, sprechen, helfen and sterben on one Präteritum sheet, and nahm, sprach, half and starb start to look like one pattern instead of four exceptions.

Frequently asked questions

Licenses and credits

Conjugation tables come from English Wiktionary through kaikki.org (CC BY-SA 4.0). Verbs are ranked by Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords list, built from OpenSubtitles 2018 (CC BY-SA 4.0).