6 The irregular verb nehmen

You’ll now look at another common but slightly irregular verb. Table 3 shows the present tense (Präsens) of the verb nehmen (to take). As you can see, similar to essen, only the second and third person singular (du and er/sie/es) forms of nehmen are irregular.

You can use the verb nehmen to replace the verbs essen and trinken, especially if there is a choice or you want to refer to drink and food (essen can only be used with food, trinken only with drinks, but nehmen can be used for either or both).

Activity 7

Part 1

Imagine you are having breakfast at a cafe or hotel and can chose any five items from this buffet. What would you choose?

Figure 8 A breakfast table

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Breakfast table with coffee, orange juice, bread, cheese, ham, fruit muesli, egg, milk jam and fruit

Figure 8 A breakfast table

List your choices, using the verb nehmen. Click on ‘reveal answer’ to see a model response

Was nehmen Sie?

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Answer

Here is a model. Please note that your answer might be different from the model given.

Ich nehme Brot, Schinken, Käse, ein Ei und Orangensaft.

Part 2

Now try using other forms of the verb nehmen.

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Part 3

Now write your own sentences. Here are two examples for you, but you don’t have to stop there. Write some more sentences in your notebook. Or even better, come back to this activity another time, practising the verb nehmen to check that you can still remember all its different forms.

Write one sentence saying what Christina is having. Use the verb nehmen and the picture clue to help you construct your sentence.

Please note case is important.

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