What is the difference between “wollen” and “werden”?

VerbsFalse friends

Feb 26

Due to their similarity to English, the two verbs “wollen” and “werden” are easily confused by German students. After reading this article and practicing with its free worksheet, you will be a pro!

The problem of “wollen” and “werden”

These two verbs have completely different meanings: “wollen” means to want, and “werden” means to become or is used to express the future tense. Additionally, there is a problem with differentiating the verbs “bekommen” and werden which I already covered in another article. As you can see, the two verbs cannot be used as a replacement, and the only reason people like to confuse them is English which means that they are false friends.

“Wollen”

“Wollen” is one of the German modal verbs, which means that one usually has to add another noun or verb at the end of the sentence to have a proper sentence. As it is a modal verb, it also has irregularities in its verb conjugation:

ich will
du willst
er will
sie will
es will
wir wollen
ihr wollt
sie wollen

As mentioned above, you have the two following possibilities to form a sentence:

Der Junge will eine Pizza kaufen.
Die Kinder wollen Eis!

Recommended study materials on the topic:

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“Werden”

“Werden” has three jobs: It can express the English verb “to become”, it can also be used to express future tense, or it can be used to express the passive tense: