A2 · Strong verbs
stehen, stand, gestanden; tun, tat, getan
very common strong verbs with irregular vowel changes
FormInfinitiv, Präteritum, Partizip II: stehen, stand, gestanden; tun, tat, getan
Meaning and usage
Some of the most frequent German verbs are strong verbs that fit no neat vowel-change group, so you learn their three principal parts together: gehen, ging, gegangen, stehen, stand, gestanden, tun, tat, getan, sitzen, saß, gesessen, liegen, lag, gelegen and kommen, kam, gekommen. The preterite forms ging, stand, tat, saß, lag and kam are used in written stories and reports, while the perfect with haben or sein is usual in speech.
Watch the perfect forms: motion verbs like gehen and kommen take sein, so you say ich bin gegangen and ich bin gekommen. tun takes haben, and so do stehen, sitzen and liegen in northern and standard German, while southern Germany and Austria use sein: ich bin gestanden. A very common mistake is inventing a weak participle like getut or gesitzt instead of getan and gesessen.
Examples 6
Bist du mit dem Bus nach Boston gekommen?
Did you come to Boston by bus?
Ich bin um sieben aus dem Haus gegangen.
I left home at seven.
Er ist genau um zehn nach Hause gekommen.
He came home exactly at ten.
O nein! Ich hab’s schon wieder getan!
Oops, I did it again.
Die Leute standen auf und begannen zu singen.
The people stood up and began to sing.
Hast du schon einmal in einem Hubschrauber gesessen?
Have you ever been in a helicopter?
Test yourself
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1 Sprachbausteine
Gestern ich sehr spät nach Hause, weil der Zug Verspätung hatte.
Show answer
Correct answer: kam
The time word gestern and the second clause with hatte show that the preterite is needed, and the preterite of kommen is kam.
- gekommen is the past participle and needs an auxiliary like bin, which is missing here.
- kommt is the present tense third person form and does not match ich or gestern.
- komme is the present tense first person form, which does not fit with gestern.
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.