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The verb brechen means to break. It gets conjugated as follows (watch out, it’s an irregular verb, so the 2nd and 3rd form singular is different):
- ich breche
- du brichst
- er/ sie/ es bricht
- wir brechen
- ihr brecht
- sie/ Sie brechen
The perfect tense goes with ‘haben’ and the past participle is ‘gebrochen’, and in the imperfect tense it’s ‘ich brach’.
But there are 18 prefixes which change the meaning, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.
- abbrechen – to interrupt/ discontinue
- anbrechen – to open sth, like a bottle of wine or a bar of chocolate ‘eine Flasche Wein anbrechen, eine Tafel Schokolade anbrechen.
- aufbrechen – to leave
- ausbrechen – to escape
- auseinanderbrechen – to break apart
- durchbrechen – to break through
- ehebrechen – to commit adultery
- einbrechen – to break in
- erbrechen – to vomit
- hereinbrechen – to close in/ cave in. In einen Raum hereinbrechen – to burst into a room.
- herausbrechen – to quarry
- losbrechen – to break loose
- umbrechen – to break down (or to wrap lines or assemble when talking about printing)
- unterbrechen – to interrupt
- wegbrechen – to break off
- zerbrechen – to shatter/ break something to pieces
- zusammenbrechen – to collapse
- das Brotbrechen – breaking of bread (in church). This is not a verb, but a noun.
Here are some idioms which are just like the English versions:
Zerbrich dir nicht den Kopf!
Don’t worry your head!
Er hat mir das Herz gebrochen.
He broke my heart.
Der Zug ist zum Brechen voll.
The train is full to bursting point!
Lasst uns das Eis brechen.
Let’s break the ice.
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. You can even choose one of two colours ☺
If you want to know about German verb conjugation in the present tense, check out my online course German tenses 1 – the present tense To get 10% off use the coupon code BLOGPOST
