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© Heidi Behrens

2. Strong Verbs in the Present Tense

3. Some German verbs are very strong willed
They do not exactly follow the pattern of weak or regular verbs
They change with ‘Du’ and ‘er/sie/es’

4. One of these verbs is ‘lesen’ (to read)
So what happens to the verb ‘lesen’ in the PRESENT TENSE?
Let’s find out…

5. Step 1: get rid off the INFINIVE ending:
les en en en en
Step 2: add the verb endings for ‘I’, ‘you’ etc.
Ich
les e

6. les en Ich e du st er t sie t es t (you – talking to a young person)
(she)
(it)

7. ihr t wir en Sie en Sie en sie en
les en
ihr t
wir en
(you – talking to young people)
(we)
Sie en
Sie en
sie en
(you – talking to one adult)
(you – talking to adults)
(they)

8. les en en
(to read)
Ich (I) du (you-talking to a young person) er/sie/es (he/she/it) ihr(you- talking to young people) wir (we) sie (they) Sie (you-talking to a stranger/strangers)
les les les les les e
lies t
lies t t en en en

9. = er (he) = = sie (she)= = wir (we)=
Fine, but what if I want to talk about my friend or my sister? No problem. Have a look at this:
Mein Freund Mein Bruder Mein Vater
ending ‘t’ Mein Bruder liest
= er (he) =
Meine Freundin Meine Schwester Meine Mutter
ending ‘t’ Meine Mutter liest
= sie (she)=
Meine Freundin und ich
ending ‘en’ Meine Freundin und ich lesen
= wir (we)=
Meine Eltern Meine Freunde
= sie (they)=
ending ‘en’ e.g. Meine Eltern lesen

10. So what happened to the verb ‘lesen’ in the PRESENT TENSE?
An extra ‘i’ was added in the stem ‘les’ with ‘du’ (liest) and ‘er/sie/es’ (liest). Also, the normal ‘st’ ending with ‘du’ is now just ‘t’ because the stem ‘les’ has already got an ‘s’.