The 50 most common German verbs

Right now: which verb do you start with

ShortcutThese fifty verbs first. Learn each one inside a sentence, never alone: not fahren, but Ich fahre nach Berlin.

Everyone who starts German asks the same first question: which words do I start with? The answer: verbs. A German sentence stands on its verb — if you don’t know the noun you can point and gesture, but if you don’t know the verb there is no sentence.

The list is not random: it is split into five topic groups, because memory works in groups. Basic and modal, movement, communication, learning, daily life. Under each group, the spot where learners mix things up most sits in one line.

The order of this page: first the table of fifty verbs, then the pairs people mix up, the irregular verbs, the Perfekt and the traps. At the very end there is a five-day plan — ten verbs a day.

The table: fifty verbs, five groups

Every row has four things: the verb, its English meaning, the er form with the Perfekt, and an example sentence. The bold part is the memorise-this spot: either a present tense where the vowel changes (er fährt) or a Perfekt that takes sein instead of haben (ist gefahren).

Group 1 · Basic. Ten verbs you meet in every sentence. The first three are auxiliaries, 04–09 are modals.

Group 2 · Movement. Going, coming, standing. Most of the verbs that form their Perfekt with sein are in this group.

Group 3 · Communication. Ten verbs you need when you talk. Two of them take no ge- in the Perfekt: erzählt · erklärt.

Group 4 · Learning. What happens inside your head. wissen and kennen are in the same group on purpose: these two get mixed up most.

Group 5 · Daily life. What you use from morning to night. The three with a dot are separable verbs.

English blurs these pairs — German keeps them apart

The two pairs people mix up most in this list are one word in English. You say “I know him” and “I know his address”, “I speak German” and “I say nothing” — with know, English uses the same word for both. German uses two, and you have to pick the right box every time.

The reverse also happens: German covers two English words with one verb. bringen is both bring and take: Bring mir bitte Wasser. (bring) · Ich bringe dich nach Hause. (I’ll take you home). laufen is both run and walk, tragen is both carry and wear. The rest of the sentence tells you the direction or the meaning.

Nineteen verbs bring their own rule

Thirty-one of the fifty verbs conjugate regularly: take the stem, add the ending — ich lerne · du lernst · er lernt. The remaining nineteen show themselves in the bold spots in the tables and fall into four patterns.

arbeiten · antworten · finden take an extra -e-: er arbeitet · er findet. That is a sound rule, not an irregularity — it is explained on the verb conjugation page.

Perfekt: eight want sein

When you speak, you build the past with haben or sein + Partizip II. Most verbs in the list take haben. Eight want sein, and they all have the same thing in common: moving from one place to another, or changing from one state to another.

One fine point: if fahren takes an object, it switches back to haben. Früher habe ich einen BMW gefahren. — “I used to drive a BMW.” With no object, when you are just going somewhere, it is sein.

Four traps

You hear these four every day, even from students who have memorised the list. What they share: the word is right, the position or the ending is wrong.

The part nobody tells you: a verb is not learned alone

Everyone does the same thing with a vocabulary list: helfen = to help, done. Then, when building a sentence, the verb comes to mind but its companions don’t: which case, which preposition, which auxiliary. The real meaning of a verb is not only its translation but what it brings with it.

The long list of verbs that come with a preposition is on the verb + preposition page. At A1, these six are enough.

Five-day plan: ten verbs a day

The pace: ten verbs a day, the list is done in five days. One group per day; three steps for each verb:

• Read it aloud: the infinitive, the er form, the Perfekt — fahren · fährt · ist gefahren.
• Say the sentence from the table out loud once.
• Build your own sentence: with ich, from your own life — Ich fahre jeden Tag mit dem Bus.

Day six: five verbs to add once the list is done. In frequency lists they compete with these fifty, and three of them fall into the same e → i pattern:

• geben — to give (er gibt)
• sehen — to see (er sieht)
• nehmen — to take (er nimmt)
• bleiben — to stay (ist geblieben)
• heißen — to be called (Ich heiße Ali.)

At the end of day five, take the ten-question test below: it tells you which group stayed weak. If you are ready to move on to adjectives, the next list is the 50 most common adjectives.