ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

German verbs

German verbs are words that show action or state of being. Imagine you are playing with toy cars and you say "I want to drive the red car." "Drive" is a verb because it shows that you want to do something. In German, every verb has different forms called tenses, depending on when the action or state of being happened. These tenses show whether the action happened in the past, present, or future.

For example, if you want to say "I am driving the red car", you would use the German verb "fahren" (drive) and the present tense form "ich fahre", which means "I drive". If you want to say "I drove the red car yesterday", you use the past tense form "ich fuhr", which means "I drove".

German verbs also change depending on the subject, which means who is doing the action or being in a certain state. For example, while "ich fahre" means "I drive", "du fährst" means "you drive". The verb "fahren" changes its ending to match the subject.

It's important to remember that German has many irregular verbs, which means they do not follow the same patterns as regular verbs. This means you will need to memorize these verbs separately to use them correctly. Some common irregular verbs in German are "sein" (to be), "haben" (to have), and "wissen" (to know).

Overall, German verbs are an important part of the language and knowing how to use them correctly is key to being able to speak and write German effectively.