Today, we’re looking at the German verb ‘fangen‘ (to catch).
It’s irregular and gets conjugated as follows:
- ich fange (in spoken German rarely said with the final ‘e’ – ich fang’)
- du fängst
- er/ sie/ es fängt
- wir fangen
- ihr fangt
- sie/ Sie fangen
The perfect tense goes with ‘haben’ and the past participle is ‘gefangen’, and in the imperfect tense it’s ‘ich fing’.
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But we also have a few prefixes which change the meaning a little.
The following verbs are separable, which means that the prefix goes to the end of the sentence or clause in the present tense, or the past participle ‘ge’ goes between the prefix and the rest of the participle.
abfangen
jemanden/ etwas abfangen – to intercept somebody/ something
to catch somebody
It also exists as a noun: das Abfangen – interception
auffangen
Dictionaries have the same translation as for abfangen, but there are subtle differences.
jemanden/ etwas auffangen – to catch someone/ something that’s falling ‘from above’
Abfangen means to stop somebody/ something from doing something, whereas auffangen is to stop somebody from coming to harm.
anfangen
anfangen – to begin/ start/ commence
Some useful sentences:
Lass uns noch mal ganz von vorn anfangen. Let’s start again from scratch.
Du fängst ja schon wieder an! There you go again!
Ich kann damit nichts anfangen. I can’t do anything with it.
Die Zeit ist reif, neu anzufangen. The time is ripe to start again.
Fang endlich an zu leben! Get a life!
Then there’s the noun ‘der Anfang’ – the beginning and a useful idiom:
Aller Anfang ist schwer. Every beginning is hard.
einfangen
einfangen – to net/ rope in/ capture/ catch
Wir haben die Maus eingefangen. We caught the mouse.
Here we could also just say ‘Wir haben die Maus gefangen.’
Ich habe mir eine Erkältung eingefangen. I’ve come down with a cold.
The following verbs are not separable.
umfangen
umfangen – to surround/ embrace/ hold tightly in one’s arms/ hug (the past participle is umfangen)
Die Nacht umfing uns. Night surrounded us.
Sie umfing ihn mit beiden Armen. She embraced him with both arms.
Then there’s the noun ‘der Umfang’ – the range/ circumference.
Sie sind im kleinen Umfang tätig. They operate on a small scale.
der Taillenumfang – waist circumference
sich verfangen
sich verfangen – to entangle oneself in something/ to get caught (the past participle is verfangen)
Ich habe meine Haare in der Bürste verfangen. My hair got tangled in the brush.
empfangen
empfangen – to receive, welcome, greet (the past participle is empfangen)
der Empfang – reception, welcome, front desk
Some useful sentences:
Sie wurde freundlich empfangen. She was well received.
Er empfing sie mit offenen Armen. He welcomed her with open arms.
Er wurde mit Beifall empfangen. He was received with cheers.
The noun is der Empfang – the reception, welcome, front desk
ein schlechter Empfang – poor reception
Sie arbeiten im Empfang. They work in reception.
What can you do with these words to remember them?
You can bookmark this post or make a vocabulary list with them. You can do that with any paper or electronic notebook. Or you could buy my notebook which I designed specially for German vocab learners. It has space for vocabulary lists and sentences – very important for these verbs as they change their meaning depending on the sentence! You can even choose one of two colours 😉
If you want to know about German verb conjugation in the present or past tenses, check out my online courses. (Use coupon code BLOGPOST to get 10% off)
German tenses 1 – the present tense
German tenses 2 – the past tenses
