THE BASICS OF CONJUGATION

A verb is the part of speech that expresses an action, mode of being, or occurrence, for example, to run, to think, to live, or in German, laufen, denken, leben. When used in a sentence, the verb is said to be inflected, meaning it may have endings or inflections. To conjugate a verb means to list all its different inflected forms in a specific and logical fashion. German has more inflected forms than English. Compare the following two sentences.
Ich laufe jeden Tag. I run every day. Wir laufen jeden Tag. We run every day.

Notice that English uses the same form (run) in both sentences, whereas German has two different forms (laufe, laufen). As you can see from the examples, the difference between the forms is the endings. Endings are one of the ways inflected verbs can show the grammatical categories of person (Person), number (Numerus or Zahl), mood (Modus), and tense (Tempus or Zeit). This section provides an overview of these grammatical categories and the category of voice (Genus). The basics of German verb conjugation are also presented.

PERSON AND NUMBER

The grammatical categories of person and number are features of both nouns and verbs in German. Number can be either singular or plural. A noun or pronoun is singular if it refers to a single person or thing, for example, I, she, the house, or Mr. Smith. A noun or pronoun is plural if it refers to more than one person or thing, for example, we, they, orchids, or the Joneses. The verb in a German sentence agrees with the subject noun in that sentence. If the subject is singular, then the verb must be a singular form, too. If the subject is plural, the verb must be plural. For convenience and efficiency, pronouns are used in the conjugation tables of this book. It is therefore important to understand the German pronouns, how they relate to person and number, and how they relate to other nouns.