German: the strong verbs

What is in this deck

With this deck you learn the strong German verbs: 200 cards with all three forms, grouped by the vowel change that ties them together.

Two hundred forms that no rule will give you. German has around two hundred verbs that change their stem vowel, and they are the ones you need every day: gehen, nehmen, sprechen, fahren, sein.

The cards are sorted by the pattern the vowel follows, not by the alphabet, because the patterns are what makes the forms learnable: ei becomes ie, i becomes a and then u, e becomes a and then o. Once you hear the pattern, a new verb of the same class costs you nothing.

Each card gives one form in a sentence, and the note behind it gives all three principal parts plus the auxiliary the perfect takes. The present tense with its vowel change and the mixed verbs have their own sections.

The categories decide what comes up: start with “Verbs with ei” alone and add the rest when you are ready.

You learn German. The cards, the categories and the usage notes are in English, so you never have to learn through a third language.

What you learn

• The patterns: ei - ie - ie, i - a - u, e - a - o
• Which verbs take sein in the perfect and which haben
• The vowel change in the present: du fährst, er nimmt
• The mixed verbs: brachte, dachte, wusste, kannte
• Prefixes on strong stems: verstand, empfahl, lud ein

The categories

10 categories sort the 200 cards. You can filter by category and take on what is due right now.

1. Verbs with ei
2. Verbs with ie
3. Verbs with i
4. Verbs with e to o
5. Verbs with e to a
6. Verbs with a
7. Vowel change in the present
8. Mixed and modal verbs
9. The wholly irregular
10. Prefixes on strong stems

Learning with Qardbox

You see a card, you think, you turn it over and say whether you knew it. A round asks nothing more of you, and how the app works out the next date from that is on the page about FSRS-6.

What sits comes back less often, what wobbles comes back soon. You set a daily goal, and when nothing is due the app tells you exactly that instead of inventing work for you. How a round goes is shown on the learning page.

Everything stays on your device. No account, no sign-up, no ads. After the purchase the deck sits in your library like any other subject and can be studied, reordered and extended just like your own.

What it costs, and what it doesn’t

Qardbox itself costs nothing, and it stays that way. Every function is there from the start, with no subscription, no ads and no tiers; what that rests on is on the page about what it costs.

Your own cards stay unlimited, and decks from friends or from the family you read in without a limit, from a file as well. You do not need this deck in order to learn with Qardbox.

It is a shortcut: 200 checked cards for €1.49, once, with Family Sharing. The work you would otherwise do is already done. The App Store shows the price in your currency.