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Tag Archives: verbs

The conjugation of the German verb “sagen” Posted by on Aug 4, 2014

The word “sagen” is one of the most frequent verbs in German. Usually, it either means “to say” or “to tell” in English. In order to form statements (declarative sentences) or commands (imperative sentences) it is necessary to conjugate verbs correctly. So, let’s have a closer look at the verb “sagen” and its conjugations of…

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German newspaper causes laughter: “Pope eats Argentines”!?. Posted by on Mar 18, 2013

Is the new pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a cannibal who favors his Argentinian fellow-countrymen as a delicious meal, just like the headline in a German newspaper suggested? Admittedly, I have no idea what kind of diet Francis, the 266th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church prefers but I’m pretty sure that he is not after…

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German word order: Subordinate Clauses, part 2 Posted by on Sep 24, 2012

In my last post I explained how to form subordinate clauses with only one verb. Now, let’s go one step further and have a look at subordinate clauses that contain two verbs. When a sentence contains two verbs, one of them is always a full verb and the other is either an auxiliary verb or…

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The English verb “to go to” and its German equivalents – part 1 Posted by on Feb 28, 2012

The English verb phrase “to go to” is a real all-rounder when it comes to tell someone that you are going to a particular destination. You can say that you are going to a friend, to a another city or foreign country, but your interlocutor still does not know how you will get and whether…

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Deutsche Modalverben – German modal verbs I: dürfen, können, möchten Posted by on Sep 2, 2011

Modal verbs modify an action or situation by expressing the ideas of permission, ability, obligation, necessity, etc. The six German modal verbs are: dürfen – may / to be allowed to können – can / to be able to möchten – to like to / to want to müssen – must / to have to…

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Separable Verbs I: Draw the line between prefixes and core verbs Posted by on Dec 1, 2010

With this post I would like to start a series on German separable verbs. In this introductory post I explain how you can distinguish separable verbs from inseparable verbs. The main difference between separable and inseparable verbs is that separable verbs consist of two words: a core verb and a semi-prefix, whereas inseparable verbs consist…

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Solution for the conjugation exercise Posted by on Oct 30, 2010

So here are the correct conjugations for the given verbs in my last article. Compare and see if you were right:

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