German for Beginners: German Modal Verbs

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
To learn the conjugation of these verbs, click on a verb for a detailed conjugation table.
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
Click on a modal verb to see its conjugation.

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Flippo, Hyde. "German for Beginners: Lesson 16C - German Modal Verbs." ThoughtCo, Aug. 23, 2016, thoughtco.com/german-modal-verbs-4077770. Flippo, Hyde. (2016, August 23). German for Beginners: Lesson 16C - German Modal Verbs. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/german-modal-verbs-4077770 Flippo, Hyde. "German for Beginners: Lesson 16C - German Modal Verbs." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/german-modal-verbs-4077770 (accessed April 19, 2018).