We’ve chosen some vocabulary and grammatical concepts from this song and provided flashcards, games and exercises for you to learn and practice them.

Did you miss the analysis for this song? Find it here!

Activities

Vocabulary Excercises

We have chosen 20 terms out of this song’s lyrics to form our vocabulary list, which can be found below. You can use the following activities to learn and practice this vocabulary.

Vocabulary Flashcards – Learn the vocabulary from this song with our sets of German to English and English to German flashcards, then test yourself with our interactive flashcards.

Vocabulary Games – Practice the vocabulary for this song using our memory and matching games and our word search puzzle.

Vocabulary Exercises – Fill in the missing vocabulary with drag and drop and fill in the blanks exercises.

Past Tense Exercises

Since there aren’t a large number of either type of past tense verbs in this song, we’ve pulled the instances of both the Präteritum and the Perfekt tenses for practice. Information on the Präteritum and the Perfekt can be found below. You can use the following activities to learn and practice these verbs.

Past Tense Flashcards – Practice the separable verbs in this song with our sets of German to English and English to German flashcards, then test yourself with our interactive flashcards.

Past Tense Games – Practice the separable verbs in this song using our memory and matching games.

Past Tense Exercises – Practice the separable verbs in this song using our drag and drop, fill in, and highlighting exercises.

Resources

Vocabulary List

Term	Meaning	P os S	Context
Angst haben	to be afraid/scared		hast Angst
Blick (pl Blicke)	look, glance; expression	masc noun	Blick
es ist mir egal	it doesn’t matter, I don’t care	adj	es ist mir nicht egal
deshalb	therefore, because of this	adv	deshalb
erkennen	to recognize, see; understand; know	irreg verb	erkenne
gemeint	intended	adj	gemeint
gerade	now, at the moment; just, a short while ago; only; exactly	adv	grade
hoffen	to hope	reg verb	gehofft
hör auf	stop, stop it		hör auf
klappen	to fold, flip, bend; to work out, go smoothly	reg verb	klappt
mögen	to like; want	modal verb	magst
nicht normal	crazy, insane, strange		normal
Schlaf (no pl)	sleep	masc noun	Schlaf
schmecken	to taste, taste like	reg verb	schmeck’
schreiben	to write	irreg verb	schrieb
trotzdem	still; regardless, nevertheless, anyway	adv	Trotzdem
Überwindung (no pl)	overcoming; willpower, volition	fem noun	Überwindung
vertrauen	to trust, have confidence in	reg verb	vertraust
vielleicht	maybe, perhaps; about, approximately	adv	vielleicht
zurückkommen	to come back, return	irreg verb	zurückkommst

Perfekt

There are two German past tenses seen in this song. The first, and by far the most commonly seen in spoken German, is the Perfekt (Perfect) tense. It is used to describe a past event or an action that has been completed. The Perfekt is formed with a conjugated auxiliary verb followed by the past participle.

The Auxiliary Verb

The auxiliary verb will be either ‘haben’ or ‘sein’. Most verbs take ‘haben’. There are a few verbs, mainly verbs used to talk about movement or a change of some kind, that take ‘sein’. The only verb we see in this song that takes ‘sein’ is ‘passieren’.

Below are the conjugations of both verbs.

haben: to have; own; suffer from

	Singular	Plural
First person	ich habe	wir haben
Second person	du hast	ihr habt
Third person	er/sie/es hat	sie haben

sein: to be

	Singular	Plural
First person	ich bin	wir sind
Second person	du bist	ihr seid
Third person	er/sie/es ist	sie sind

The Past Participle

Forming the past participle is simple. For regular verbs add ge– to the beginning of the infinitive, then replace the final –en with –t. For example, the verb ‘kaufen’ becomes ‘gekauft‘.

Some verbs that have spelling changes in the past tense will also have this spelling chnge in the past participle. The verb ‘denken’ follows this pattern. You will see the ‘e’ is replaced with an ‘a’.

Verbs that end in –ieren, follow yet a different pattern. These verbs still change the final –en to a –t, but they don’t add ge- at the beginning. This is seen in this song with the verb ‘passieren’.

Below are the past participles that appear in this song:

Verb	Meaning	Auxiliary	Past Participle
passieren	to happen; pass, cross	sein	passiert
denken	think, believe	haben	gedacht
hoffen	to hope	haben	gehofft
sagen	to say, tell; mean	haben	gesagt

Präteritum

The other past tense that appears in this song is the Präteritum, or Preterite tense. This tense is mostly seen in written German, however there are a few verbs that are frequently seen in spoken German as well. We see two of these verbs, ‘sein’ and ‘konnen’, in this song. All three verbs that appear in this song are irregular.

Conjugations

The following charts show the full conjugations of the verbs in this song that appear in the Präteritum.

sein: to be

	Singular	Plural
First person	ich war	wir waren
Second person	du warst	ihr wart
Third person	er/sie/es war	sie/Sie waren

können: to be able to, know how to

	Singular	Plural
First person	ich konnte	wir konnten
Second person	du konntest	ihr konntet
Third person	er/sie/es konnte	sie/Sie konnten

schreiben: to write

	Singular	Plural
First person	ich schrieb	wir schrieben
Second person	du schriebst	ihr schriebt
Third person	er/sie/es schrieb	sie/Sie schrieben