The Perfect Tense

There are a number of ways to talk about the past in German. There is the equivalent to the English Simple Past which is called Imperfect. These are forms like I was/ had/did/went/played/ etc. In German these forms are mainly used in written language.

In spoken German the Perfect Tense is far more common. It is quite similar to the English Present Perfect Tense.

In order to say I did/ have done or I played/ have played you need a form of ‘haben’ and a past participle. Please note that there are two ways to translate it into English.

Beispiel:

ich habe gemacht       I did/ have done

ich habe gespielt         I played/ have played

Past Participles

The past participles are formed from the infinitive of the verb, e.g. spielen. Firstly, we add the prefix ‘ge’. Then we take away the ‘-en’ ending and replace it with the letter t. This works for all weak or regular verbs.

Strong/ irregular verbs

However, there are a large number of strong or irregular verbs in the German language (similar to sing – sang – sung or go – went – gone). For those verbs you need to learn the past participles. There are irregular verb lists in every good dictionary which will help you speak and write correct German.

For practice purposes there is  a small selection at the end of this blog.

Verbs of motion

There are some verbs that take ‘sein’ instead of ‘haben’ to form the Perfect Tense. These are verbs of motion such as gehen (to go), fahren (to go by means of transport), fliegen (to fly), and many more. Usually they are marked by a star or diamond in the verb lists.

To sum up, here is the pattern for forming the Perfect Tense:

A form of ‘haben’ or ‘sein’ + past participle

We looked at the forms of ‘haben’ and ‘sein’ in yesterday’s blog.

Let’s practice:

Write or say the following phrases in German. They all take ‘haben’ and have regular past participles.

1. I bought – kaufen

2. she did – machen

3. we played – spielen

4. he booked – buchen

5. they listened – hören

6. you (sg) surfed - surfen

The answer key is at the bottom of this posting.

The following list contains some common irregular past participles:

essen – gegessen        eat – eaten

trinken – getrunken    drink – drunk

singen – gesungen      sing – sung

sehen – gesehen         watch/see – watched/saw

lesen – gelesen           read – read

Form some sentences using these past participles. They all take ‘haben’.

We will look at the verbs taking ‘sein’ in another posting.

Answer key:

1. ich habe gekauft

2. sie hat gemacht

3. wir haben gespielt

4. er hat gebucht

5. sie haben gehört

6. du hast gesurft