Present Tense - Verbs conjugation

In the Present Tense, the verb form depends on the subject of the sentence:

When addressing someone formally, use polite forms of address and the third person verb form (singular or plural). Note that this differs from English, where the second person verb form is used.

In the Present Tense, there are 4 groups of endings, commonly called classes:

The table below shows the endings for each class:

myśleć(to think) / słyszeć(to hear)

There is no way to determine the verb's class without learning it by heart. The best approach is to learn every verb together with its first two forms.The first two forms are sufficient to determine the verb's class.

The following example demonstrates how to determine the endings class. Consider the verb myśleć(to think):

This is the infinitive form of the verb. At this point, the verb's class cannot be determined. Let's add the first form I think:

Based on the first form, the verb's class remains unclear because the ending matches both the first and second class. Let's add the second form You think:

Now we know that the first two endings are and , so we can deduce that this verb belongs to the second class.

In the next section you will learn how to apply rest of the endings.

To conjugate a verb you need to connect or with an appropriate ending. The conjugation pattern is straightforward and looks like this:

For some verbs and are identical. Notice that if you learn each verb together with its first two forms you also learn both of these stems.

Let's say we want to conjugate the verb brać(to take). We should learn this verb together with its first two forms biorę and bierzesz. Based on these two forms we can deduce that:

Now we can conjugate the verb by connecting these stems with first class endings according to the conjugation pattern:

The last thing I need to clarify is the second class of endings. This one is the most complicated. As you can see, it has two endings (left and right) assigned for each form. To determine which ending to use, follow exactly the same pattern as for stems. If the first form of the verb connects to the left ending , then all forms with should use left side endings. If the first verb form uses the right ending , then all forms with should use right endings. The same rule applies to . It will be easier to understand with an example.

Let's come back to the verb myśleć(to think) from the previous section. This is its first form:

Based on this form, we can see that the verb uses the right ending , so all forms with should use right endings. Let's add the second form:

Based on this form, we can see that the verb uses the left ending , so all forms with should use left endings. The conjugation will look like this:

There are some verbs that do not follow the regular conjugation pattern and have some irregularities in their conjugation. These conjugations must be learned by heart.