The Solution

The Solution

While on the one hand it’s only very little information that you have to remember, it is at the same time highly abstract and therefore causing trouble. But there’s hope.

Take a look at the following images and read the description below. They are in English as we don’t need much German at this moment:

In words:

• A US American is digging for gold.
• A Saudi Arabian is singing your favorite song.
• One woman is borrowing from another one some wind (represented by a fan).

You will certainly remember these three images for a very long time even without reviewing them. That is because they are concrete images, that are a bit out of the ordinary. Now what is their purpose?

These images will help you to remember the following patterns:

How? Let’s take a look at the sentences that came along with the pictures:

• A US American is digging for gold.
• A Saudi Arabian is singing your favorite song.
• One woman is borrowing from another one some wind.

Notice that I have highlighted certain words in different ways. The bold ones are keywords while the italic ones are the verbs which forms you are about to learn.

In the first sentence US American is our keyword and to dig (=graben) the verb to learn. As I have mentioned above, the German pattern for to dig is u – a. Compare that to the keyword US American. Do you already notice anything? The first two vowels of US American are the same as the pattern-vowels u and a. The first vowel marks the vowel of the Präteritum, the second one the vowel for the Perfekt. From now on the word “US American” will always remind you that to dig uses the pattern u – a as found in: grub – gegraben.

One further example

Take a look at the singing Saudi. Saudi is our keyword. It contains three vowels but we only need the first two. So we simply take the a and u and ignore the third one. Singing will now forever be associated with a Saudi and you will easily remember the pattern a – u.

One last thing

The keyword is wind. But wind only has got one vowel, the i, despite the fact that we need two of them. Well, if there is just one, we will simply use it for both forms. So the pattern for to borrow (=leihen) is: i – i.

But that’s only half the truth. The past forms for leihen are actually lich (Präteritum) and geliehen (Perfekt), both with an ie instead of a single i.

The problem was to find a keyword with an ie. I couldn’t find a good one, so I decided to use a single i instead, as your brain will easily remember when to turn it into ie and when to leave it as it is. You will see soon that this will cause you no trouble at all.

Summary of the technique

Let me summarize the steps you need o memorize the irregular verbs:

1. Browse through the memory images in the training section and read the memory sentence at their bottom.
2. Take your time and close your eyes for a few seconds and reimagine that image and remember that sentence. [If you can’t remember it, take another look.] Add feel, noise and smell to it. Two examples:
   1. The wind is blowing and making a howling sound. The women’s hair is moving. You can smell their perfume.
   2. [Don’t add any other action to it as the wind should only be associated with to borrow.]
3. Then go to the next image. You can also combine two or three images that use the same keyword but never combine images with a different keyword, as that would mess things up.
4. Test your knowledge in the test section of this app.

(Almost) no German required

You don’t need to learn the German meanings or sentences at this moment, although of course you are free to do so. We have added two special training section just for this purpose. Later, when you have to learn that graben means to dig you will remember that it was the USAmerican who was digging for gold and already know the pattern for graben, namely: grub, gegraben.

Now practice and test your knowledge and share you success stories with us.

I wish you viel Erfolg mit Deinem Deutsch and if you like this app, please let others know and leave a review.

Herzlichst
Michael