F
Futur
The future tense. werden + infinitive, used far less than English "will" - German often just uses Präsens with a time word instead.
Read the full guide →Futur II
The future perfect. werden + participle + haben/sein, used for a confident guess about what will already be true by some point, not a plain future action.
Read the full guide →I
Infinitiv
The base form. No person, no tense, the form you'd look up in a dictionary. Modal verbs and werden always push it to the end of the sentence.
Read the full guide →K
Konjunktiv
The subjunctive. Konjunktiv II builds the unreal or hypothetical (wäre, hätte, würde + infinitive); Konjunktiv I reports someone else's words without claiming they're true.
Read the full guide →P
Passiv
The passive voice. werden + participle, where the thing acted on becomes the subject, and the doer, if named at all, moves into a von-phrase.
Read the full guide →Perfekt
The spoken past. haben or sein + participle, the tense Germans actually use in conversation, where English would default to simple past.
Read the full guide →Plusquamperfekt
The past before the past. hatte or war + participle, used only to mark that one past event had already finished before another one started.
Read the full guide →Präsens
The present tense. One set of six endings, and also German's normal way to talk about the near future - no separate future form needed.
Read the full guide →Präteritum
The written past. Used in narration, and for haben/sein/modal verbs even in speech; every other verb prefers Perfekt when spoken.
Read the full guide →Back to Part 1 · Word classes A-Z, or browse the full blog index.