Grammatik: Regular verbs 1

1. Regular verbs. In English, we have endings added to the verb, as in the he-form of the present tense:

I come; he come-s

Or we have the ending -ed to indicate the past tense in regular verbs:

I wait; I wait-ed

In German, verb endings are more differentiated than in English. The general fornm (infinitive) of verbs is usually characterized be the ending -en:

hab-en; to have
bekomm-en; to get
versteh-en; to understand
komm-en; to come
sag-en; to say

Only a few verbs end in -n, for example:

tun; to do
sein; to be

2. The present tense of regular verbs shows the following pattern:

ich komm-e; I come
du komm-st; you come
er/sie/es komm-t; come-s

wir komm-en; we come
ihr komm-t; you come
sie komm-en; they come

The above verb form are the only ones by which Germans express the present tense. For phrases like I am coming, we are saying, etc., they simply say: ich komme, wir sagen, etc.