FormInfinitiv (e) → Präteritum (a) → Partizip II (ge- + e-Stamm + -en)
Meaning and usage
A small group of strong verbs follows the vowel pattern e → a → e: geben, gab, gegeben, sehen, sah, gesehen, lesen, las, gelesen, essen, aß, gegessen, vergessen, vergaß, vergessen, treten, trat, getreten and geschehen, geschah, geschehen. The past tense stem has a, and the participle goes back to the vowel of the infinitive. Note that essen is irregular in a second way: its participle is gegessen, not geesst.
You use the Präteritum forms (gab, aß, sah) mostly in writing and stories, and the perfect with haben in speech: ich habe gegeben, du hast gelesen. The participle ends in -en, not -t, because these are strong verbs. A common mistake is building the participle from the past stem: gegaben instead of gegeben, gesahen instead of gesehen. Keep the infinitive vowel in the participle: gelesen, gesehen, gegessen.
Examples 5
Haben dir deine Eltern die Erlaubnis dazu gegeben?
Did your parents give you permission to do this?
Sie hat einen jungen Mann am Eingang gesehen.
She saw a young man at the entrance.
Haben Sie schon die Zeitung von heute gelesen?
Have you read today's newspaper yet?
Wie viele Süßigkeiten hast du letztes Wochenende gegessen?
How much candy did you eat last weekend?
Letzte Woche habe ich jeden Tag Pizza gegessen.
I ate pizza every day last week.
Test yourself
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1 Sprachbausteine
Gestern Abend wir zusammen Pizza.
Show answer
Correct answer: aßen
The time word gestern calls for the simple past, and the Präteritum stem of essen is aß, so with wir the form is aßen.
- essen This is the infinitive or present plural form and cannot describe a finished action yesterday.
- isst This is the third person singular present form and does not fit the subject wir or the past time.
- gegessen This is a participle and would need a helping verb such as haben, which the sentence does not have.
In this topic: Strong verbs
- drei Stammformen: gehen, ging, gegangen learn strong verbs as three forms together
- bleiben, blieb, geblieben strong verbs with ei that become ie in the past
- trinken, trank, getrunken strong verbs with i, a, u: trinken, trank, getrunken
- sprechen, sprach, gesprochen strong verbs with a in the past and o in the participle
- geben, gab, gegeben strong verbs with e to a in the past, e in the participle
- fahren, fuhr, gefahren strong verbs with a → u in the past tense
- fliegen, flog, geflogen strong verbs with o in preterite and participle
- schlafen, schlief, geschlafen strong verbs with ie in the preterite
- stehen, stand, gestanden; tun, tat, getan very common strong verbs with irregular vowel changes
Example sentences from Tatoeba, used under CC BY 2.0 FR. See sources.