Grammar

The focus of this lesson is the past participle, part 2

Haben Sie alle Kundendaten eingegeben?
"Have you entered all the customer data?"

Let's continue our study of the German past participle.

In the last lesson, we already learned that it is typically formed by adding ge- before the
3rd person singular (he/she/it) present tense form of a verb. For example, “sagen”
becomes “gesagt”.

However, there is one large group of verbs for which this isn't true; the vowel-changing
verbs. Whenever there would be a vowel change for this particular form, the participle
is formed based on the infinitive instead. Some examples.
sehen → er sieht → gesehen (seen)
geben → er gibt → gegeben (given)

There are also some verbs whose past participle is just plain irregular. For example.
sein → gewesen (been)
haben → gehabt (had)
kommen → gekommen (come)

These issues of vowel change and irregularities are carried over when you have the
same verb with an added prefix. Then you just additionally have to remember the rules
for prefixes, which we discussed in the last lesson. For example.
ansehen → er sieht an → angesehen (looked at)
vergeben → er vergibt → vergeben (forgiven)
ankommen → er kommt an → angekommen (arrived)
bekommen → er bekommt → bekommen (received)

Past participles are not just used on their own, they are also necessary for various
tenses. In today's dialog we already saw them used with the auxiliary verb “haben” to
form the perfect tense. This is just like in English - “ich habe gearbeitet” = “I have
worked”, “Haben Sie in den Katalog geschaut?” = “Have you looked at the catalog?”
and so on.

Be sure to practise!