German for Beginners: Lesson 16C - German Modal Verbs

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by Hyde Flippo
Hyde Flippo taught German for 28 years at the high school and community college levels and has published several books on German language and culture.
Updated March 06, 2017

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.
EnglishDeutsch
be permitted, maydarf - dürfen
be able, can, knowkann - können
like, want, maymag - mögen
have to, mustmuss - müssen
should, ought/supposed tosoll - sollen
want towill - wollen
Click on a modal verb to see its conjugation.


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