The German verb machen means to do/ make/ create. It gets conjugated as follows:
- ich mache
- du machst
- er/ sie/ es macht
- wir machen
- ihr macht
- sie/ Sie machen
The perfect tense goes with ‘haben’ and the past participle is ‘gemacht’, and in the imperfect tense it’s ‘ich machte’.
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But there are lots of prefixes which change the meaning. 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.
For example:
aufmachen – to open
Ich mache die Tür auf. – I’m opening the door.
Ich habe die Tür aufgemacht. – I’ve opened the door.
Other prefixes are:
- abmachen – to agree
- altmachen – to make old
- anmachen – to turn on
- armmachen – to impoverish
- ausmachen – to switch off
- bekanntmachen – to publicise
- bewusstmachen – to make aware
- blaumachen – to play truant
- breitmachen – to spread
- davonmachen – to make off / do a runner
- durchmachen – to pull an all-nighter
- einmachen – to preserve
- festmachen – to secure
- flottmachen – to speed things up
- fortmachen – to carry on, edge away
- freimachen – to clear the way
- gerademachen – to set things right/ straight
- gleichmachen – to equalise
- gutmachen – to make amends
- heilmachen – to repair/ heal sb/ sth
- heißmachen – to heat sth
- heranmachen – to approach
- irremachen – to mislead/ bewilder
- kaltmachen – to cool things down, but also colloquially for to kill somebody. Ich mach dich kalt! I’m going to kill you!
- kaputtmachen – to break things
- kehrtmachen – to turn (things) around
- klarmachen – to make things clear
- kleinmachen – to belittle/ chop sth up
- losmachen – to release
- mitmachen – to participate
- nachmachen – to imitate
- vormachen – to demonstrate
- wegmachen – to remove
- zumachen – to close
There are also some phrases/ idioms worth knowing.
- Mach Dampf! – Shake a leg!
- Mach Beine! – Get a move on!
- Feierabend machen – to finish work
- Mach keinen Quatsch! – Don’t be silly! Don’t talk rubbish!
And everybody’s favourite phrase (which sadly often get’s translated wrong):
Das macht Spaß! That’s fun!
Das hat Spaß gemacht! That was fun!
Did you like this blog post? You didn’t?
Da ist nichts zu machen!
There’s nothing you can do about. 😄
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
