Did you know that the German language only has six tenses? Sechs Zeitformen. Compared to other languages, it looks quite okay, right? But it's getting better. Did you know that you only need two tenses? Only two tenses if you want to express something in the past or present time or in the future. Let me show you the German tenses a little quick on this timeline here. In German, we do have three tenses for the past. The first one is das Plusquamperfekt, that's past perfect, not really common used. Then we have das Präteritum, simple past, and Perfekt, that's the present perfect tense. The past in German we call die Vergangenheit. Then we come to the present tense, auf Deutsch das Präsens. On the present time is die Gegenwart. And then we also have two future tenses, which are not really important. And the future in German is die Zukunft. And as you can see here, six tenses, two above, two in yellow, Perfekt und Präsens, and these are the two ones which are important and you can express anything from the past to the future. But in this video... We will talk about only the most important, most common tense, which is das Präsens. Hello and welcome to Your German Teacher. If you are new here, welcome. Ich heiße Luzi. In today's video, we will talk about das Präsens. Now, present tense. When do you actually have to use it? We have four different situations when you can use it. Number one, of course, when you talk about something happening right now. Zum Beispiel, Lisa schläft. Lisa is sleeping. That's happening right now. Number 2. General statements, facts or also regularities. Zum Beispiel, 2 plus 2 ist 4. That's a fact. Ich arbeite jeden Tag. That's a regularity. Nummer 3. Duration of an ongoing action. If something is an ongoing thing. For example, he has been learning German for two years. It started in the past but it's still ongoing. He's still learning German. Therefore, you can use in German the present time. And we can also talk about the future. For example, tomorrow I have free time. Tomorrow I am off. More about future later in my bonus tip. Alright, when we talk about tenses, the most important part is the verb conjugation. Auf Deutsch die Konjugation. According to the verb conjugation, you can see in which tense the sentence is written or spoken. For the present time in German, we do have regelmäßige oder schwache Verben. And we also have unregelmäßige oder starke Verben. Regelmäßig, regular verbs. Why Schwach? Why is it called Schwach? Because they are weak, they are not able to change, which is actually a good thing. Unregelmäßige Verben oder starke Verben. Stark heißt strong. They are strong enough to actually change. Wir fangen an mit den regelmäßigen Verben. Here we have the verb machen. Machen is the infinitive of the verb and infinitive is the original form. The first form, when you learn a new verb, you always learn the infinitive, the original form of the verb. Now when we conjugate the verb we do have different persons. We have the first person singular. That is I. The second person singular is you. Third person singular is he, she or it. Then we come to plural. First person plural is we. The second person plural is ihr. Ihr is you in plural. You guys. And the third person plural is sie. Sie is they. Or the capitalized sie, which is the formal you. They have the same conjugation. Now, these things are called personal pronomen, personal pronouns. And more about personal pronouns in all different cases, you can find on this playlist up right here in the card. Now when you look at the infinitive, now you see this ending en, which is actually in most German verbs you have this ending en in the infinitive. When you conjugate it, what do you have to do is you have to cut off this en, you drop this en and then you have this so-called Wortstamm. Wortstamm is the word stem or in English just stem, which is the kind of the base of the verb. And this wordstamm you have in all six persons. Now, what you have to do when you conjugate, you have to add the endings. The ending for ich is i, ich mache. Du machst, st. Er, sie, es macht, ti. Wir machen, in. Ihr macht, ti. Und sie machen, also in. And these endings, these are the most important ones you have to memorize. You have to learn these endings. For all regular verbs, you can't just add these endings. So again, you have the Stamm, Wortstamm, and then you just have to add those endings. Machen wir ein Beispiel. Let's do an example. Die Frage, was machst du gerade? Was machst du gerade? What are you doing right now? And here I want to point out another important thing when it comes to present tense in German. For example, in English or also in Spanish, you do have this continuous form, this progressive present tense, which is this ing. What are you doing at the moment right now? In German we don't have this and there is no ing, there is no progressive form. We just use the normal present tense. But you can add a time word like for example here gerade, right now. And then people know exactly that you want to ask them what are you doing right now. All right, you are watching YouTube. You're watching a YouTube video. Then you can use the verb schauen. Schauen is a regular verb. and then you can say ich schaue youtube ich schaue ich is the person pronoun ich schau stem ending i ich schaue youtube machen wir ein anderes beispiel let's do one more one more regular verb we take the verb kaufen kaufen heißt to buy something and it's also a regular verb To make it a little bit more interesting, to make a complete sentence, we buy something. And in this case, we buy a beer. Ein Bier. We have again the personal pronouns and you also have the Wortstamm, the stem. Again, you can add the endings. We do it together. Ich kaufe. And what are you buying? You're buying a beer. So you can add Bier. Ein Bier. Ich kaufe ein Bier. Du? Kaufst ein Bier? Er, sie, es. kauft ein Bier, wir kaufen ein Bier, ihr kauft ein Bier und sie kaufen ein Bier. Let's go to unregelmäßige Verben, irregular verbs. And you can see there is only about 200 verbs which are regular. So the vast majority of all German verbs are regular verbs, irregular ones only about 15%. There is one problem though. Most of those 200 verbs are actually very common verbs. So you have to memorize, you have to learn those. The most important ones, of course, like in other languages as well, sein. Sein is to be and haben is to have. We start with sein because sein is a complete irregular verb. There is nothing you can do. You have to memorize it. You have to learn it by heart. Ich bin, du bist, er, sie, es ist, wir sind, ihr seid, sie sind. That's it. There is nothing I can help you with. You have to memorize those conjugations for the verb to be. Next one. Haben. To have. Ich habe. Du hast. Er, sie, es hat. Wir haben. Ihr habt. Sie haben. And here, as you can see already, you have the same endings. You have the same endings as for the regular verbs. and another pattern which is important for irregular verbs you can see the second second and the third person singular they are irregular This B is dropped, you just have du hast und er, sie, es hat. And this pattern is very important to know because in most irregular verbs they are actually only irregular in the second and the third person singular. A different verb. Helping means to help. Helping is also an irregular verb. I help. You help. He or she helps. We help. You help. They help. And again, you can see only irregular in the second and third person singular. And here we have this so-called vocalwechsel. Vocal is a vowel. Wechsel is change. So it's a change of the vowel. Here in this case it's E becomes I. Only for second and third person singular. This is the most common one. Vocalwechsel. But mostly important. It's only irregular in the second and third person singular. Another example with the same vocalwechsel is treffen. Treffen heißt to meet somebody. Ich treffe. Du triffst. Er, sie, es trifft. Wir treffen. Ihr trefft. Sie treffen. Again, only irregular, only different from regular verbs in the second and third person singular. Another one is important one is sehen. Sehen heißt to see. Ich konjugiere. Ich sehe. Du siehst. Er, sie, es sieht. Wir sehen. Ihr seht. Sie sehen. And again, only irregular in second and third person singular. And this one again ist ein Vokalwechsel, but from E to IE. Another example, same Vokalwechsel, zum Beispiel lesen. Lesen heißt to read something. Ich lese. Du liest. Er, sie, es liest. Again only irregular there. Fahren. The third one is important one from Vokalwechsel. Fahren. Fahren has to drive, to ride or also to go. Ich fahre. Du fährst. Er, sie, es fährt. Wir fahren. Ihr fahrt. Sie fahren. Again irregular only for second and third person singular. and this vocal wechsel is called R to A, R umlaut. So you see the R, the A becomes these two dots and is called umlaut. That's the only change when it comes to the verb conjugation in the present time. Another example with the same vowel change is to wash something. Ich wasche, du wäschst. Er, sie, es wäscht. Wir waschen, ihr wascht. Sie waschen. But again, you see, they have all the same endings as the normal regular verb conjugation. These are the endings you have to memorize when it comes to conjugate. Regular or irregular verbs in present time. Bonus tip! As mentioned before, future. Can you use the present tense for the future? Yes, you can. Zum Beispiel, was machst du morgen? What are you doing tomorrow? What are you going to do tomorrow? Here you see normal present tense. Was machst du morgen? Because of this morgen, tomorrow, we know it's going to happen tomorrow. So we use the normal present tense. Answer, for example, morgen kaufe ich eine Tasche. Morgen kaufe ich eine Tasche. Tomorrow I will buy a bag. Again, because we know that we talk about morgen or here you can mention it as well, morgen. You can just use the normal present time. Ein anderes Beispiel. Nächstes Jahr fahre ich nach Berlin. Nächstes Jahr fahre ich nach Berlin. Oder heute Abend gehen wir ins Kino. Oder wir treffen Lisa um 14 Uhr. And you see all of those they have this time word in the sentence which makes it clear for the listener or the reader what time we talk about. So if you want to express something in the future, you can use the normal verb conjugation, the normal present tense, and add a time word, any kind of time word, and people know that you talk about the future. And this is actually also the most common way to use the future tense always just use the present tense house of carbon you have house of carbon on swadi froggy was must do heute abend was must do heute abend for example the answer heute abend see here is an infill or anything heute Abend koche ich Abendessen anything is fine let me know down in the comments write it down the answer to this question using just the present time all right now you should know when you can use the present time how to conjugate the verbs in the present tense you You can talk about future, you can talk about the present of course and now you want to learn how to talk about the past tense. Then you have to watch this video right here where I explain everything about the present perfect tense. Vielen Dank fürs Zuschauen. Thank you very much for watching. I hope you liked it. I hope you learned something. Bis zum nächsten Mal. Auf Wiedersehen. Tschüss und bye bye.