Just like the "Sie" form of the imperative, you merely take the normal "wir" form of the present tense verb and follow it with the pronoun, which cannot be omitted. There is also a "wir" form of the imperative which equates to "Let's do something" rather than being an order. The verb "stoßen" has the imperative stoß! (and not: stöß), although the present tense of the verb is du stößt.The verb "laufen" has the "du" imperative lauf! (and not: läuf), although the present tense of the verb is du läufst.The verb "tragen" has the "du" imperative trag! (and not: träg), although the present tense of the verb is du trägst.The verb "fahren" has the "du" imperative fahr! (and not: fähr), although the present tense of the verb is du fährst.Verbs that make other vowel changes in the "du" form of the present tense do not retain this vowel change in the imperative. Note however that this vowel change in the "du" imperative is only true for those verbs with a stem vowel in "-e-" that changes to "-i-" or "-ie-". The "ihr" and "Sie" forms remain unaffected by this vowel change. Such verbs never add the ending "-e" in the "du" form. These strong verbs also retain this vowel change in the "du" imperative. The "du" imperative of certain irregular verbsĪs we have seen when looking at the present tense, there are a number of irregular or 'strong' verbs with a stem vowel in "-e-" in the stem change this to "-i-" or "-ie-" in the "du" form on the present tense. Note in particular that the "Sie" form of the imperative is the only one in which the pronoun is used in the command you must omit the pronoun in the "du" and "ihr" forms. The "Sie" form of the imperative is exactly the same as the "Sie" form of the regular present tense BUT the word order is reversed - the verb always precedes the pronoun.Ħ. The "ihr" form of the imperative is exactly the same as the "ihr" form of the regular present tense.ĥ. See the verb "handeln" (= to act) in the table above.Ĥ. Verbs whose infinitive ends in "-eln" drop the "-e" of the stem in the "du" imperative but not in the "ihr" and "Sie" forms. See for example the verb "warten" (= to wait) in the table above.ģ. The "-e" ending on the "du" imperative is always kept with verbs whose stem end in "-d", "-t", "-ig" and "-m" or "-n" after another consonant. This "-e" ending is usually dropped in spoken German and quite often in written German as well.Ģ. The "du" form of the imperative is formed by dropping the final "-en" of the infinitive and adding "-e" to the end of the word. The verb endings for the imperative depend on the person to whom you are talking: Table 1: Forms of the imperativeġ. Once you get the hang of it, it will be by your side helping you out, whenever you use the language.The imperative is used to give orders or instructions or to express requests. While you may not be as enthusiastic as I am, my aim is to help you understand how German grammar works, in plain English with loads of examples.ĭon’t be scared of German grammar. I’m lucky in that when I started learning about German grammar, I discovered that I’m actually a grammar nerd and find it absolutely fascinating. While basic sentence structure follows the same ‘subject verb object’ rule as English does, it quickly becomes quite different to English with the verb usually being in the second position, or sometimes going right to the end of the sentence. As you may know, German assigns genders to nouns, it adds endings to adjectives and it has four grammatical cases. German grammar does like to throw some added challenges to us English speakers. While they can seem intimidating and very different to English to begin with, with repeated use you will start to notice patterns. In order to speak fluently and to be able to build sentences quickly, it is essential to know German grammar rules. So when it comes to learning German, you’ll need to get used to all different grammar terms as well as learning the various rules of German grammar. Most of us don’t know about the grammar of our own language, we just speak it. Whether you love it or hate it, German grammar is one of those things that you need to get used to if you want to use German correctly.
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