German 1 Online: Reading Guide for Pages 70-71: Stem-Changing Verbs
By now you should be familiar with the navigation of the e-Text on the Connect website, so future reading guides will
assume you can find your way to the correct pages. For this assignment, simply enter “70” in the search bar at the
top where it says “jump to pg” and you will land on page 70.
Page 70
Verbs with Stem-Vowel Changes
In the last chapter, you learned how to conjugate regular verbs. You will continue to use THE SAME
ENDINGS on nearly all verbs in German — the endings do not change except in a small handful of
special verbs that we will learn later. What does occasionally change is the VOWEL in the middle of
the stem, so these verbs are usually called “stem-changing verbs”. Be aware that if you speak
Spanish or French, ‘stem-changing’ verbs in those languages are very different! German stemchanging verbs have the same endings as all other regular verbs: only the small vowel in the
middle changes.
Things to notice:
• Look at the chart on page 70 and notice how the verb endings are what you would expect for a German verb.
Nothing is changing about the endings of the verbs: you learned these endings last chapter.
• What does change for each verb in the chart? The middle vowel changes in the DU and ER/SIE/ES forms only.
• The main idea here is to remember that when you use these verbs in their DU or ER/SIE/ES forms, you have to
make the small vowel change — that’s it! Their endings remain the same as what you would expect for
regular verbs, you just have to remember to change the sound and spelling of the vowel for DU and ER/SIE/
ES. Nothing else, and none of the other subjects (ich, wir, ihr, and Sie) will act any different from the verbs
you learned last chapter.
• There are three categories of stem-changing verbs: verbs that change the vowel A into Ä with umlaut, verbs that
change the vowel E into I, and a smaller number of verbs that change the vowel E into IE.
• “Fahren” (‘to drive/ride’) is a good example of the A-Ä stem-changing verb. When you say “I drive”, it’s exactly
what you would expect: “ich fahre”. But when you say “you drive” the vowel gets an umlaut: “du fährst”.
Remember that the umlaut changes the pronunciation: “ich fahre” is “faaah” like in “far” or “farther”, but
“du fährst” is “ehh” like in “fair” or “fare”. The “he drives” has the change too: “er fährt” is pronounced
like English “air fare” with a -t at the end.
• “Schlafen” (‘to sleep’) does the same thing as fahren — but remember that vowels can be either long or short
in German. So the SOUND of “he sleeps” in German, with the Ä change, “er schläft” is going to be a longer
Ä sound, more like English “safe”: “er schläft” would rhyme with “air safed” in English.
• With “laufen” (‘to walk or run’), you have the same A to Ä change, but you have “AU” as a compound vowel
(diphthong). When “AU” (pronounced like “ow!” in English) changes to “ÄU” with the umlaut, the new
sound is “Oi!” like in “boy” or “oil”. So in “ich laufe”, the vowel rhymes with “cow”, but in “er läuft” the
vowel rhymes with “toy”.
• The I-E verbs, like “essen” (‘to eat’), are fairly straightforward: the sound is like the difference between “pen”
and “pin” in English: “ich esse” with an “eh” sound like “pen”, but “er isst” with an “ih” like in “pin”. Do
notice a funny quirk: when you say “er isst” (he eats) and “er ist” (he is) in German, they SOUND exactly the
same. Only in writing can you see the difference. So if you want to say “he is what he eats”: “er ist was er
isst” — the verbs do sound exactly the same.
• A small number of verbs, like “sehen” (‘to see’) and “lesen” (‘to read’), don’t just change the E to I, but rather
to IE. This is a longer sound in German, like the sound in English “seat” or “eel”. So “ich sehe” rhymes with
English “say”, but “er sieht” sounds like English “air seat”. Same thing with lesen (to read): “ich lese” is
like English “lay”, but “du liest” is like English “leased”.
• With stem-changing verbs, there is a very obvious difference between the verbs for ER and the verbs for IHR.
This was NOT true of regular verbs last chapter: remember that “he comes” (“er kommt”) and “you all
come” (“ihr kommt”) looked and sounded the same in the verb form. But with stem-changing verbs, the ER
form changes its vowel but the IHR form does not: “he eats” (“er isst”) sounds different from “you all
eat” (“ihr esst”).
• One final note on stem-changing verbs: You actually cannot KNOW that a verb is a stem-changing verb just by
looking at the infinitive. A regular verb like “kaufen” does not have any vowel changes, but the stemchanging verb “laufen” — even though it sounds the same in the infinitive — DOES have the a-ä vowel
change. You will need to learn new verbs as you encounter them, and practice enough to know whether they
are stem-changing verbs or not. To ease your mind: there are not that many stem-changing verbs in the
entire language. Below is a list of nearly ALL stem-changing verbs in German (there are a handful more
you’ll probably never need). You may occasionally run into others in the future, but if you remember these
main stem-changing verbs, you won’t have any difficulties overall.
E to I Verbs
E to IE Verbs
A to Ä Verbs
brechen (to break)
empfehlen (to recommend)
backen (to bake)
essen (to eat)
lesen (to read)
fahren (to drive)
geben (to give)
sehen (to see)
fallen (to fall)
helfen (to help)
stehlen (to steal)
fangen (to catch)
nehmen (to take)
halten (to stop, hold)
sprechen (to speak)
laden (to load)
sterben (to die)
lassen (to let, leave)
treffen (to meet)
laufen (to run, walk)
vergessen (to forget)
schlafen (to sleep)
versprechen (to promise)
schlagen (to hit)
werden (to become)
tragen (to wear, carry)
werfen (to throw)
wachsen (to grow)
waschen (to wash)
(Verbs in underlined bold are those you really should learn right away for this chapter’s
practice. Other verbs are much less common and you won’t need them in the near future.)
Page 70-71
Übung 16, and 17
You will complete exercises 16 and 17 as part of your Connect Aufgabe, so you can ignore the
textbook page for now until you complete that assignment. Exercise 18 is not assigned.
Now that you have learned how to form verbs correctly when they have a vowel change, you should complete the
Aufgabe on the Connect website. After you have completed those exercises, move on to the next reading guide
(pages 72-74), where we finally learn how to make plural nouns in German!