These two verbs are used frequently and are irregular verbs. They must be memorized!

*ACHTUNG* Just because we now know “I am …” or “I have …” doesn’t mean we can just translate from English into German. One of the biggest mistakes that language learners make is to think you can just translate from one language into the other.

For example: How are you? I am good.

You may want to say:

Wie bist du? Ich bin gut.

This does NOT work in German. Remember what we learned in 1.1 and 1.5:

Wie geht es dir? Mir geht es gut. 

You will learn other expressions like this through out the book.

Personal Pronouns refer to the person or thing which performs the action expressed by the verb. Pronouns stand in for nouns when it is clear who is being talked about. For example, when you want to talk about a person without repeating their name, you use a personal pronoun. You have already seen all these pronouns used in sentences.

Beispiele:

Was sprichst du? Ich spreche Englisch und Deutsch.

Joaquin kommt aus Peru. = Er kommt aus Peru.

Olena ist Ukrainerin und Kanadierin. = Sie ist Ukrainerin und Kanadierin.

Here is a list of some of the verbs we have used so far in Einheit 1. Please begin to practice and memorize these verbs. Notice anything similar about the endings of the verb stem? You can click on the infinitive forms of the verbs to see what their English translation would be.

*ACHTUNG*
The underlined portion of the infinitive is the “verb stem”. The process of making sure that the verb and pronoun correspond is called conjugation.