Purpose

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to distinguish main verbs, auxiliary verbs, and modal verbs, and conjugate the three key auxiliary verbs in the present tense.

Lesson Explanation

Main verbs express the actual action and can form a predicate on their own: laufen, denken, schreiben (to run, to think, to write). Present-tense conjugation follows a regular pattern, shown here with lernen (to learn): ich lerne, du lernst, er/sie/es lernt, wir lernen, ihr lernt, sie lernen.

Auxiliary verbs — haben, sein, and werden — combine with a main verb to build complex tenses, and are covered fully in Part 4 of this course: haben and sein for the perfect tense (Part 4, Lesson 2), werden for the future tense and the passive voice (Part 5, Lesson 3).

Sein (to be) in the present tense (genuinely irregular): ich bin, du bist, er/sie/es ist, wir sind, ihr seid, sie sind.

Haben (to have) in the present tense (also irregular): ich habe, du hast, er/sie/es hat, wir haben, ihr habt, sie haben.

Modal verbs — können, müssen, dürfen, sollen, wollen, mögen (can, must, may, should, want, like) — express ability, necessity, permission, or desire, and are almost always combined with an infinitive at the end of the sentence, which connects directly to the verb-last position covered in Part 2, Lesson 3: Ich muss heute arbeiten. (I have to work today — the main verb “arbeiten” sits at the end of the sentence).

Practice Questions