Tag 05 - Verben im Präsens

Tag 05 von 60 - die Wortbetonung, die Endungen im Präsens, die Pronomen, und das Verb an zweiter Stelle. Zwei Stunden.

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Until today you have been using verbs as whole chunks: ich heiße, ich wohne, Haben Sie Zeit?. Today the chunk comes apart. Five regular verbs, six endings, nine pronouns, and suddenly you can build sentences that were never on a list.

The second half of the day is one rule, and it is the rule that makes German sound German: the conjugated verb is the second element of the sentence. Not the second word - the second element. Put anything you like in front of it, and the subject moves behind it. English does not do this, so it has to be drilled rather than understood.

The sounds block is about stress. German puts the weight on the stem of the word, and in a simple word that means the first syllable. Get that wrong and you can be fully correct and still hard to follow.

How to run this page

Work top to bottom, about two hours. Say every answer out loud before you type it. Nothing is saved - reload and every score is zero again. The checker accepts ue for ü and ss for ß, but the proper spelling is what you want in your fingers.

1. Aufwärmen - zehn aus Tag 04

Cold, before anything else. haben, kein and the prices from yesterday.

2. Aussprache - die Wortbetonung

Every German word has one syllable that carries the weight. The rule for almost everything you will meet this month:

German stresses the stem, and in a simple word the stem is the first syllable.

Wort	Betont	Warum
wohnen	WOH-nen	simple word, first syllable
kommen	KOM-men	simple word, first syllable
lernen	LER-nen	simple word, first syllable
arbeiten	AR-bei-ten	still the first syllable
Bahnhof	BAHN-hof	compound: the first part wins
verstehen	ver-STE-hen	ver- is an unstressed prefix, so the stem takes it
Entschuldigung	ent-SCHUL-di-gung	ent- is unstressed, the stem is schuld
Student	stu-DENT	borrowed word, stress at the end
studieren	stu-DIE-ren	verbs in -ieren stress the ie

Two groups break the first-syllable habit, and both break it for the same reason: the first syllable is not the stem. Unstressed prefixes (be-, ge-, ver-, ent-, er-) never take the stress, and borrowed words keep something close to their original pattern.

The -en ending gets swallowed. In writing, wohnen has a clear e in the second syllable. In speech, that e almost disappears and the ending collapses onto the n: WOHN-n, KOMM-m, LERN-n. This is why wir haben so often sounds like a single squeezed hahm and why spoken German sounds faster than it is. Nothing is missing - the weight simply all sits at the front and the ending is thrown away.

Say each of these three times, hitting the first syllable hard and letting the ending go: wohnen, kommen, lernen, machen, arbeiten, haben, sprechen.

Stress is not volume

Stressing a syllable in German means it is longer and higher, not louder. Beginners who shout the first syllable sound angry rather than clear. Lengthen it instead, and let everything after it shorten.

3. Neue Bausteine - zwölf Stück

Read each one aloud twice before the drill. Notice how many of them are the same three verbs with a different ending.

Deutsch	English	Wann
Ich wohne in Hamburg	I live in Hamburg	now with the ending visible
Ich komme aus Indien	I come from India	origin, the everyday version
Ich arbeite in Hamburg	I work in Hamburg	arbeiten needs a helper e
Ich lerne Deutsch	I am learning German	German has one present tense, not two
Er kommt aus Berlin	he comes from Berlin	third person, -t
Sie wohnt in München	she lives in Munich	she, small s
Wir lernen zusammen	we learn together	wir takes the plain infinitive ending
Ich studiere an der TUHH	I study at the TUHH	studieren, stress on the ie
Was machen Sie?	what do you do	job, or right now
Ich mache einen MBA	I am doing an MBA	der MBA, so einen
Er arbeitet nicht	he does not work	nicht goes after the verb
Sie sprechen schnell	you speak fast	say this to anyone, often

Die Grammatik dahinter

Die Endungen. Take the infinitive, cut off the -en, and you have the stem. Then hang six endings on it. This is the whole regular present tense:

Person	Endung	wohnen	kommen	lernen	machen	arbeiten
ich	-e	wohne	komme	lerne	mache	arbeite
du	-st	wohnst	kommst	lernst	machst	arbeitest
er / sie / es	-t	wohnt	kommt	lernt	macht	arbeitet
wir	-en	wohnen	kommen	lernen	machen	arbeiten
ihr	-t	wohnt	kommt	lernt	macht	arbeitet
sie / Sie	-en	wohnen	kommen	lernen	machen	arbeiten

Three things fall out of that table. The wir, sie and Sie forms are identical to the infinitive, so half the work is already done. The er and ihr forms are identical to each other, and context tells them apart. And German has one present tense: ich lerne covers both I learn and I am learning, so stop looking for the second one.

arbeiten takes an extra e. A stem ending in t or d cannot have -st or -t glued straight on - arbeitst is unpronounceable. So an e is inserted: du arbeitest, er arbeitet, ihr arbeitet. The same happens with finden and warten later. It is a pronunciation fix, not a new rule to memorise.

Die Pronomen. Nine of them, but only seven shapes:

Deutsch	English	Anmerkung
ich	I	small i, always
du	you	one person you know
er	he
sie	she	small s
es	it
wir	we
ihr	you	more than one person you know
sie	they	small s again
Sie	you (formal)	capital S, always, singular or plural

sie is doing three jobs: she, they and, with a capital, you. The verb ending sorts it out - sie wohnt can only be she lives, sie wohnen can only be they live or you live.

Das Verb steht an zweiter Stelle. The rule that shapes every German statement. The conjugated verb sits in slot two, and slot one can hold anything you want to foreground. If you put something other than the subject in slot one, the subject does not disappear - it moves behind the verb.

1. Start from the plain order, subject first:

   Ich lerne heute Deutsch. - subject in slot 1, verb in slot 2.

2. Decide to foreground the time instead. Move heute to the front - and move nothing else:

   Heute lerne ich Deutsch. - heute is slot 1, lerne is still slot 2, and ich has slid in behind it.

3. The wrong version, which is the one your English brain will produce for the next month:

   Heute ich lerne Deutsch. - this has the verb in slot 3. It is always wrong.

Laid out as slots, with the place phrase counting as one single element:

1	2	Rest
Ich	arbeite	heute in Hamburg
Heute	arbeite	ich in Hamburg
In Hamburg	arbeite	ich heute

Note that in Hamburg is two words but one element, which is why the verb still counts as second. The test is not words, it is blocks of meaning.

4. Drills

Four kinds, borrowed from the old Foreign Service method. Mechanical on purpose: speed and automaticity, not thought.

Substitutionsdrill

Replace the word in brackets and say the whole new sentence.

Konversionsdrill

Conjugate. You get a pronoun and an infinitive, you give back the pronoun with the correct form. Fast, without looking at the table.

Antwortdrill

Answer as yourself, in a full sentence.

Übersetzungsdrill

5. Wiederholung

The scheduled review: Tag 04 first, then Tag 03, with today’s verbs mixed in. Sixty seconds, as many as you can, and run it twice - once now and once before you close the page.

6. Text und Hören

Every line uses only what you have had by today.

A: Guten Tag! Wie geht es Ihnen? B: Danke, gut. Und Ihnen? A: Gut, danke. Wo wohnen Sie? B: Ich wohne in Hamburg. Ich komme aus Indien. A: Und was machen Sie? B: Ich mache einen MBA. Ich studiere an der TUHH. A: Sehr gut. Sie lernen auch Deutsch? B: Ja, genau. Ich lerne Deutsch. Sie sprechen schnell!

Read it aloud twice, both parts. Then cover the text and say B’s lines from memory - they are all about you, so there is no excuse.

7. Bidirektional

These are the eight sentences you turned into German on Tag 02, coming back the other way. Read each German line, then write the English without looking at Tag 02. Then compare - the gap between your English and the model is the part you did not really own two days ago.

8. Sprechen - zehn Minuten

Paste this into a voice AI and actually speak. Ten minutes, out loud, standing up.

Du bist eine freundliche Person an einem Bahnhof in Hamburg. Ich bin
Anfänger (Tag 2, A1). Sprich sehr langsam und nur mit diesen Wörtern:
Guten Tag, Hallo, Tschüss, Auf Wiedersehen, Entschuldigung, Wie geht es
Ihnen, Danke gut, Und Ihnen, Ich bin müde, Ich bin Student, Sind Sie aus
Deutschland, Wo ist der Bahnhof, Was ist das, Das ist ein Café, Sprechen
Sie Englisch, Ich verstehe nicht, Ich heiße, Ich wohne in, Ich bin aus,
Ja genau, Nein danke.
Stelle mir drei Fragen: wie es mir geht, woher ich komme, und ob ich
Student bin. Benutze nur die Formen von sein: bin, bist, ist, sind, seid.
Maximal sechs Wörter pro Satz. Wenn ich einen Fehler mache, wiederhole den
Satz einfach richtig, ohne Erklärung. Fang jetzt an und begrüße mich.

Use Ich verstehe nicht on purpose

Today you have the sentence that keeps a conversation alive: Ich verstehe nicht. Use it at least three times in the ten minutes, and do not follow it with English. Say it, wait, and let them say the sentence again more slowly. Learning to stay inside German while lost is a separate skill from vocabulary, and this is the day it starts.

9. Auf Papier

Diktat. Play the shadowing audio again. Write down any five German words you hear, by hand, without pausing. Then mark every umlaut you wrote, and any you think you heard but could not place.

Satz des Tages. Write the six forms of sein by hand, in order, without looking: ich, du, er, wir, ihr, Sie. Then write three sentences by hand, from memory:

1. That you are tired.
2. That you are a student and you are from India.
3. A question asking a stranger where the station is.

Check them against section 3 only after all three are on paper.

Fehlerliste. Add today’s wrong answers to the Fehler page in your notebook, in German, correctly, no English. If a mistake was an umlaut, circle the umlaut.

Genus-Farben. Still nothing to do - the first nouns arrive tomorrow. Get three coloured pens ready today: blue for der, red for die, green for das.

Goldlist. Starts tomorrow. Today, just put a dated heading on a fresh double page of your notebook and leave it empty.

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Weiter: Tag 06 - Wiederholungstag - kein neuer Stoff, ein längerer Dialog, und zwanzig Minuten sprechen.