Past of steigen

Question

Is this book (German for Reading Knowledge) correct? It lists steigen as...

infinitive: steigen

past: stieg

present: steigt

I've not encountered a vowel change like this for the past tense before. Being a novice I haven't been able to figure it out with my dictionary!

Wouldn't it have been easier and less effort to look up a dictionary instead of taking a picture, upload it and write a question here? — bakunin, Jan 19 '24 at 08:17
The line above "steigen/stieg" in your photo has "schreiben/schrieb", which has the same vowel shift. — HalvarF, Jan 19 '24 at 08:28

Janka · Answer 1 · 2024-01-18T22:51:00.750

Use this verb dictionary.

For each and every verb, you have to drill the forms in the box at the top:

steigen, es steigt, es stieg, es ist gestiegen

Also see e.g.

treten, es tritt, es trat, es hat getreten

from your examples.

Those are infinitive, third person Präsens, third person Präteritum, Perfekt auxiliary and Partizip II. With some practice, you can guess all the other forms of the verb (find them below in that dictionary) from those four.

But you have to know the four forms above for each verb because you cannot guess those. There are only 175 of those “strong” stems but because of the many prefixed variants they make up about half of the verbs in everyday use. So drill them until you got it.

Past of steigen

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