German for Beginners: Lesson 16C - German Modal Verbs

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Hyde Flippo
German Expert
    Hyde Flippo taught the German language for 28 years at high school and college levels and published several books on the German language and culture.
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    Hyde Flippo
    Updated February 24, 2020

    German for Beginners: Lektion 16C

    Lesson 16C: German Modal Verbs (3)

    In the first part of this lesson we learned how the modal verb können can be used to mean “to know,” but it has many other uses. In this part of Lesson 16 we'll take a closer look at the verb können and the other modal verbs in German.

    Modal verbs in German are used in much the same way as they are in English. Notice the close resemblance between these English and German sentence pairs, with the modal verb in red: Imust do it. / Ich muss es tun. - Can you go? / Kannst du gehen?

    Below is a chart with the six German modal verbs and their meanings. Note that each modal verb has two basic forms, a singular form and a plural form:

    Modalverben
    German Modal Verbs

    English Deutsch
    be permitted, may darf - dürfen
    be able, can, know kann - können
    like, want, may mag - mögen
    have to, must muss - müssen
    should, ought/supposed to soll - sollen
    want to will - wollen