With the help of mnemonic example sentences the learning of German irregular verbs gets really easy

 

But first of all: What is special about German irregular verbs?

Irregular German verbs or "strong" verbs, as some people call them, are distinguished from so called "weak" verbs, or, regular verbs.
For people who want to learn German usually it is really hard to learn those irregular verbs, because they change their stem vowel in the past tense (preterit) and perfect tense. Well, I know; so far it sounds a bit too abstract ...

So let me give you a quick example for regular verbs at first

You see, that with these verbs the vowel of the verb stem always stays the same. The verb “lernen” (to learn) has in all the three forms an “e”, the verb “machen” (to make / do) has always an “a”.

Irregular / strong verbs

Irregular respectively strong verbs behave differently. With the irregular verb “essen” (to eat), the stem vowal of the infinitive “e”, changes to “a” in the preterit tense and back to "e" in the perfect tense. Moreover these verbs change their stem vowal often in the 2nd and 3rd person singular in the present tense, too. For example, the verb “essen” is in the first person singular “ich esse” , but in the 2nd person singular “du isst”, and in the 3rd person singular “er/sie/es isst”. These changes of stem vocals are called “Ablaute” (vowel gradation).

The irregular verb “nehmen” (to take) changes its stem vocal as well in the preterit tense and in the perfect tense.

 

Regular/weak verbs or irregular/strong verbs?
How can you recognize them?

Of course, your teacher of German will tell you whether a German verb is strong or weak, but surely you want to be able to find out yourself.

For this you need urgently a decent dictionary. With this I mean one that is appropriate for you as student of German. When you're really serious about learning German, you'll have to have in any case a monolingual dictionary in addition to your bilingual dictionary. And indeed  one, which contains all the information that's important for you!  A simple German spelling manual is certainly not sufficient.

On the right side, you see an explanation, which is brought up together with the verb.
Irregular verbs are in principle presented in a similar way, you just  have to make sure that you change the stem vowal.

 

It's very, very important that you're able to look up this information, otherwise you won't know whether you're learning correct German or not.

The problem with this is indeed, that it is very hard to learn this information. You have to write the corresponding verbs on cards in any case, and repeat very often the forms of the preterit tense and  the perfect tense (participles), to learn the “Ablaute” (vowel gradations).

I can tell you, this is one of those common situations, where the students ask their teacher: HOW can we learn this? And it is guaranteed  the teacher will answer:

That's certainly not what you want to hear! OK, with a bit of luck, you're given the advice to use cards. That's all very well, but most likely you want a method, with which you can

bring structure in the chaos of the dictionary and with which you can REALLY learn “the easy way”

... and not in one way or another but with a system - so that you DON´T HAVE TO REPEAT THINGS SO OFTEN!

 

All well said, but how is it done? 

My practice-tip if you have to German learn irregular verbs: Use mnemonic exsample sentenses!

 

What are mnemonic example-sentences?

Now, normally you find in dictionaries or in German lessons most of the time an example-sentence together with the verb, so that you understand what it exactly means.

For the irregular verb “essen”, you find in the dictionary for instance this example-sentence: “Sie isst kein Fleisch.” (She does´nt eat meat) And: “Was gibt es heute zu essen?” (What are we having for lunch today?)

That's all very well, but it isn't of any help with the learning of the vowel gradations of these strong verbs.

That's where the mnemonic example-sentences come in!

Mnemonic example-sentences contain a mnemonic keyword, or a memory-trigger, which will help you to remember the vowel gradations while  learning the strong verbs. Here is an example for you:

As you can see, the word “Apfel” is our mark-word. The mark-word can have any length you want, the important is that the two first vowels remind us of both vowel gradations of the irregular verb.

So when you can remember the mark-word of your example-sentence, which should be a lot easier than to learn the abstract information of the dictionary by heart, then you know automatically the form of the verb in the past tense and the perfect tense (participle).

Strong verbs change their stem vowels often in the 2nd and the 3rd person singular of the present tense. For this reason we use in the example-sentence a subject in the 2nd person or 3rd person singular, which reminds you that the verb “essen” becomes “isst” in these forms, and thus changes its stem vocal.

You could easily enhance the mnemonic effect by using even a second mnemonic keyword additionally to the other one. Make sure that the first two vowals of it must be the same as in the other keyword. For example, we could use the word "Affe" (monkey) for the subject. Now our example sentence would look just like this:

 

And here another example for our second verb “nehmen”: (to take)

Here as well you can see that the verb changes its stem vowal in the 2nd and 3rd person singular, from “e” to “i”. Our mnemonic key-word this time is the “Mango-Frucht” (mango fruit). As soon as you can remember this mark-word, you know instantly which are the vowals of the two other forms of this irregular verb. 

In a second step you should try to visualize your example-sentence. Don't worry, you don't have to be able to draw. It's a lot more important that you use and practice your creative fantasy! Brain research has proven the following:

 

An intense imagination has just
the same effect on our brain as a real perception!

We'll try this one time with another example, with the irregular verb "reiten - ritt - geritten" (to ride - rode ridden).

When you create such mental images, try to take into account the following points, for optimizing your memory: 

• bring in a lot of action in your mental movie theater!
  
• use as many senses as possible - smell, hear, feel, taste!
• make sure your mental images are funny and unusual
• link emotions to your mental images! Experience joy, fun, fear, sadness... (of course not all at once)
• let the images properly unfold in your fantasy
• take more or less 5 seconds for this
• Und ...

learnin any case with flash cards!

And not only when you want to learn irregular verbs, but basically for the learning of vocabulary. It is proven since a long time that you can learn vocabulary in a much more intensive, and thus in a more  lasting way, with flash cards then simply from word lists. . These are the advantages: specific choice you sort them as you like coincidental order unbeatable 5-compartment-principle

 

Here is how you write your cards
mnemotechnically right

Of course, in the end  it's up to you how you want to write your cards. But when you want to apply the here presented mnemotechnic to the learning of German irregular verbs, I recommend to simply copy me. Here is an example of how the flash cards for strong verbs as for instance “essen” (to eat) and “nehmen” (to take) would look like:

"I'm very excited about this method to learn irregular verbs." Karin Bauer-Weisenstein, Switzerland

OK, in all this euphoria I have to admit: one has to be very creative to find a mnemonic key-word for a mnemonic example-sentence for every German irregular verb you have to learn. But this is not a problem either - I let the cat out of the bag ...

 

I have 2 solutions for you!

First:

The mnemonic key-word doesn't necessarily have to be German. You can even use any word of your mother tongue. The only thing that's important is that the two first vowels sound the same as the German vowel gradations, which you have to learn. The meaning of the word doesn't matter at all. In principle you can build in every noun you like in a mnemonic example-sentence. The only important thing  is that you remember the corresponding vowel gradations later!

 

The second solution is a real screamer:

For the following list of 107 irregular verbs, I have mnemonic example-sentences completely ready for you! Yep, that´s right!

 

But it still gets better!

For this whole list of strong verbs, there are ready-to-use flash cards with mnemonic example-sentences! You only have to print them out and off you go ... This way you can learn German in a much more relaxed way.

 

Apart from many, many other themes of German grammar, you find additionally more super methods for the learning of German irregular verbs.

In this practice-ebook you learn as well

• the power of “micro-stories”, and moreover how the use of the city Paris and other symbols can be of an invaluable help with the learning of irregular verbs..

• all the things a woman in a miniskirt has to do, just that you can learn German irregular verbs in a better way 

 

But, of course, for the start you can also just sign up for my
absolutely FREE 5-days-video-course

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