A verb tells us what someone does, or what something is. Every complete German sentence needs one. In dictionaries, a verb appears in its infinitive form — the "to do" form — before you change it to match the subject.
Why does the verb change at all? English already does this, you just don't notice it: you say "I go" but "he goes" — the verb "go" gets a small change ("-es") to match "he". English barely changes its verbs (mostly just that one "-s" for he/she/it), but German changes the verb ending for every single person (ich, du, er, wir, ihr, sie) — not just "he/she/it". That's really the whole idea behind "conjugation": the verb's ending matches whoever is doing the action, exactly like English "go" → "goes", just done consistently for every person instead of only one.
| German | English |
|---|---|
| lernen | to learn |
| Ich lerne Deutsch. | I learn / am learning German. |
What is the German word for "to learn" (the infinitive)?