The Konjunktiv I is used in order to report what another person has said and to express a sound distance or in other words neutrality towards that information. This is the mode that responsible journalists or translators use in their work. YOU will very rarely use the Konjunktiv I in daily life as it would sound arrogant unless you are hanging out with the noblesse (and then you will have other problems than the Konjunktiv I anyhow).
There is a present and a past form of the KI and mostly one uses the 3rd person singular and plural (er/es/sie/sie (pl)) which is why we’ll focus on those forms in this course. Anything else you can figure out in C2 as it is more a fetish than a necessity to look at these other forms.Here are two verbs as an example:
es* geh.e ===> Das Mädchen (=es) sagte, es gehe noch zur Schule.
sie geh.en ===> Die Mädchen (=sie) sagten, sie gehen noch zur Schule.
*es represents er and sie as well
How to build the KI
The base for the KI form is the infinitive and in the 3rd person singular gets the ending -e:
gehen - es geh.e
sehen - es seh.e
fahren - es fahr.e
The only specialty is the verb “sein”. It doesn’t get that -e ending:
sein - es sei
whereas the plural form is regular:
sie sei.en
The past form of the KI
The past form of the KI resembles the Perfekt tense. All you got to do is to create the Perfekt form but put the auxiliary verb (that’s either haben or sein) into the KI:
Perfekt ===> KI
es hat gesehen ===> es habe gesehen
es ist gegangen ===> es sei gegangen
Passiv Präsens Indikativ (=that’s the normal form):
Die Straße wird dieses Jahr umgebaut.
Passiv Präsens Konjunktiv I:
Die Straße werde dieses Jahr umgebaut.
Passiv Perfekt Konjunktiv I:
Die Straße sei dieses Jahr umgebaut worden.
The modal verbs
Nothing new or surprising here. They build the KI as any other verb does:
können ==> es könne
wollen ==> es wolle
müssen ==> es müsse
dürfen ==> es dürfe
mögen ==> es möge
sollen ==> es solle
And in the past form that’d look like follows:
Er behauptete, er habe das Fahrrad nur kurz ausleihen wollen.
No biggie, right?
If any of the above confuses you, take a deep breath and read through it again step by step. You’ll get the hang of it when you do some of the following exercises. And remember: you only need to be able to comprehend this unless you want to become a journalist for a German newspaper.
Verwechslungsgefahr
As I wrote above, the PI is used only in very specific situations which you might not even get exposed to much. That is also due to one big issue with the forms of the KI: It often looks like the Präsens tense. Here all forms of the Präsens and the KI of “gehen” and also the KII form. I’m certain you see the problem:
Präsens ===> Konjunktiv I ===> Konjunktiv II
ich gehe ===> ich gehe ===> ich würde gehen
du gehst ===> du gehest ===> du würdest gehen
es geht ===> es gehe ===> es würde gehen
wir gehen ===> wir gehen ===> wir würden gehen
ihr geht ===> ihr gehet ===> ihr würdet gehen
sie gehen ===> sie gehen ===> sie würden gehen
The only form that’s pretty distinct is the 3rd person singular. While du gehst and du gehest are different, they are pretty similar and easy to mistake for one another. So, in order to make clear that one prefers to stay neutral in relation to the reported message, one often falls back on the Konjunktiv II as that form is not easily mistaken for the Präsens tense in German as you can hopefully easily see in the table above.
What the difference between KI and KII then?
The lazy man’s approach is to always use the KII when one wants to neutrally report what another person has said. Yet, the KII has a slightly wider range of functions than the KI. KII is also used for desires (Ich würde gerne fließend Deutsch sprechen.) and for suggestions (Ich würde das nicht tun, wenn ich du wäre.) The KI is only used for reported speech.
That’s basically all that distinguishes them from one another.
Wiedergabe des Imperativs
I got one more special case for you: the KI form of the imperative. For that you have to use “mögen” and “sollen”. They differ in intensity. “mögen” is softer, “sollen” stronger.
Two examples:
- Let’s say your boss told you to please tell a colleague of yours to come to his office at 11am you would say: ”Frau Meyer, Sie mögen bitte um 11 Uhr zu einem Termin mit Herr Schmidt kommen.”
- A police woman says: Please, get out of the car!
You’d report that as follows: „Die Polizistin sagte zu dem Fahrer, er solle sofort aus dem Wagen steigen.“
You might have noticed that both sentences contained the word “bitte”. The use of “bitte” doesn’t necessarily mean that you are being soft or friendly. But that shouldn’t be new to you as it is used the same way in English. Or would you say that “Could you please shut the fuck up?” is friendly?
This topic is covered in: C1-L05