German Is Easy!: Learn German Online - German Past Tense

05/02/2019 Learn German Online – German Past Tense | German is easy!
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Learn German Online – German Past Tense

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Hi everyone,
and welcome to our German is Easy- Learn German Online

– Course. Today, we’ll start talking about the past tense in
German which is, at least in my humble opinion
The Most Important Thing Ever
That’s right. I think it is that crucial. Now you may say

“Oh pshhhhhh… past shmast… I live in the here and now
man, the present. Why should I bother with past? I’d rather
learn how to hold conversation and speak fluently… can
you do a post on that?”
Well… yes, the present tense is useful. I’m sure you’re
doing all kinds of things right now… like reading, sitting,
breathing in, transpiring, digesting and anticipa…
But this is NOTHING compared with what you have already done today, and even nothinger when you look
back at the past months. The thing is, you can study all kinds of things like cases or prepositions or genders
or vegetable names … you will NOT be able to hold even the easiest normal conversation if you don’t
know anything about the past tense.
This is true for pretty much any language. But it is turbo-true for spoken German. Why? Because the past
tense has such deep an impact on German sentence structure.
In English you can often still understand the gist even if you don’t know anything about past.
I drink a coffee.
I drank a coffee.
I go home.
I went home.
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https://yourdailygerman.com/past-tense-german/ 1/18
Ok… the second example doesn’t really illustrate my point since present and past don’t have much in
common there.
But compared to the standard German past used in 73,1 * % of all spoken conversation (*number made up,
may differ from actual number), the normal present-past-sentence pairs in English are virtually twins.
Not so in spoken German.
Ich trinke einen Kaffee.

Ich habe einen Kaffee getrunken.
Ich gehe nach Hause.

Ich bin nach Hause gegangen.
Whops. The past version looks really really different from the present. And it sounds different, too, so if
you don’t know about this, you will be super confused.
So… German past is something you really should dedicate a lot of energy to and make sure you got this
automatized BEFORE you worry about all the other stuff. Trust me, it’ll be tremendously helpful.
And by the way… it’s not only helpful with speaking and understanding. It’s also great because the forms
you’ll learn will help you trace back an incredible amount of adjectives and nouns to their core: a verb.
Here is proof.
der Marktstand (the market stand) –

identical to the past of stehen (to stand):
Ich stehe auf. (I get up)

Ich stand auf. (I got up)
Ich bin aufgestanden. ( I got up)
der Zug (the train) –

similar to the past of ziehen (to pull)
Ich ziehe. (I pull.)

Ich zog. (I pulled.)
Ich habe gezogen. (I pulled.)
So, forget cases and gender and all this other crap. Focus your energy on past first.
And today we’ll start with a look at some general facts about German past.
Past tense in German

There are 2 simple facts about the past in German. First of, everything was gooder (even the grammar). And
secondly, everything was cheaper. Take my grandfathers IPhone. He got the JFK-Edition back in 1965 for
as little as 10 € and you know what…. it works just fine and he even used it to knock down parts of the
Berlin wa… what? Oh I am being stupid again? … oh you’re right… I’m sorry.
Here are the real facts. Firstly, there are types of past… in jargon they are called predator and adequate…
or was is preterit and perfect? I’m not sure.
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Anyway… I will call them spoken past and written past.And every verb has both forms. So far this setup is
no different from English with the present perfect and the simple past. (And nerds… please don’t tell me
that present perfect is in fact present tense with perfect aspect. It talks about events of the past, so to my
German language brain it is just past. German doesn’t have the concept of aspect.)
Anyway… the structures of the German and the English past forms do resemble one another.
I saw a bird.
Ich sah einen Vogel.
I have seen a bird.

Ich habe einen Vogel gesehen.
But that’s where the commonalities end. The German spoken past may look a somewhat similar to the
English present perfect at times but the usage is totally different.
The thing is this… which form of German past to use does NOT, I repeat, NOT depend on the content or
information you want to get across. It rather depends on HOW you get the information across… and it also
depends on the actual verb. Here are some examples. Thus what is present perfect in English can translate
to either form in German.
I have been to Paris.
can be translated to either of the following, depending on the situation or personal preference of the speaker.
Ich war in Paris
Ich bin in Paris gewesen.
And consequently this:
I was in Paris.
can also have either version as translation. It depends on the “mode” of language if you will.
He ordered a tea and began reading the newspaper.
Er bestellte einen Tee und fing an, die Zeitung zu lesen.

Er hat einen Tee bestellt und dann angefangen, die Zeitung zu lesen.
The first version is appropriate for a novel or an essay while the second version sounds fine in actual
spoken German.
And that is the very reason why I call that form of past the spoken past. With a few exceptions it is the form
used for spoken German… and that absolutely does include any writing that is kind of spoken language
written down… like SMS, E-mails, letters, chats, blogs, diarrhea .. oh… I mean diary … so whenever you
write as if you talk to someone, that qualifies as spoken. And in spoken German you ought to use spoken
past.
Now, there are 2 exceptions to that. A small number of verbs like haben, können or wollen is always using
the written past... not because they don’t have a spoken form… remember… every verb Subscribe for free
has either form.
And also not because they are fancy modal verbs. Germans are simply used to it that way. Using the other
way sounds weird.
Besides those written-past-only-verbs there are a few others like finden, wissen or geben for which both
forms are used in spoken German. For some the choice depends on the content for others it is just personal
preference but we’ll look into that in detail later on.
So… think of the spoken past as THE past. Learn how to build that and use it. And learn the few written-
past-only-verbs as exceptions… there are maybe about 15 or so… so not too much.
Don’t sit down and learn the written past for all verbs. It is a waste of time for a beginner. You will NOT
need it. The only occasion requiring you to have solid command of the written past for a verb like fahren
(to drive) is if you want to write a novel. Or if you want to sounds like you’re stage acting.
Wie oft fuhrst du diesen Winter Ski?
This is what Google Translator translates it to
How many times have you went skiing this winter?
Well… close enough… now, this is what it actually should translate to if you want to conserve the tone and
feel.
And so I shall inquire of thee on how many occasions thou have indulged in the amusement
of skiing…
Using the written past in spoken German doesn’t make you sound smart and certainly it won’t make you
sound like a native.
So… a quick recap and then we’re done for today.

There are 2 forms of past in German – the spoken past and the written past. The spoken past is used in
spoken German and spoken-like writing for about 98 percent of all verbs. The other 2 percent use the
written past also in spoken.
With the exception of said verbs, the written past is only ever used in real novel or newspaper writing. So…
unlike in English the 2 past forms in German DO NOT differ in meaning nor should they be taken as
indication which form to use in German.
You can use either form in either situation… it might just sounds awfully weird because it is against what
people are used to.
Alright… so … next time we will learn how to build the spoken past for all verbs and since every good
show needs a cliffhanger, we will also find out just what is the terribly shocking secret Marvin the Mole had
been hiding from his mole friends… and no… he is not a mole-ester…
If you have questions or suggestions just leave me a comment. I hope you liked it and see you next time.
German Past Tense – Part 2
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Bash
:) a very informative (and funny) post.

I didn’t know that the “written past” and the “spoken past” strictly do not differ in meaning. Very
encouraging since I HATE the written past forms of verbs (will only stick to spoken past for now)!
thanks! Keep it up!
 Reply  6 years ago
Lynn
Thanks for another awesome post! I just finished a unit on the ‘written past’ with my German 2 students. I
told them (and tested them) just on comprehension as the ‘spoken’ tense is what is really used (except for
those 15 or so verbs you mention). I’m going to read parts of this to them as I think it underscores how the
‘written’ past would sound to a German in a way they will remember. I look forward to your next post. :)
 Reply   6 years ago
German-is-easy
Cool :)…. I chose the du-form because this is the most weird sounding… the he/she/it sounds familiar since we see it in
books and the ich-form is the same but the du-form really is so uncommon that it is on the edge of sounding wrong. The
cringe factor is comparable to “fahrtest du”…. by the way… the regular fragtest used to be frugst some centuries ago and
backen is on the edge right now…. I say buk, my girldfriend swears to god it is backte. We had to look it up and it turns
out both are correct… we didn’t know because we never hear it anywhere.
The English Wiktionary marks buk as archaic already, while the German doesn’t :)
Reply   6 years ago
Bradford
The original form is actually “fragte” and not “frug”, see this (lengthy) video on the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZCPXF67NMg
P.S. I am indeed aware that this comment of yours is over three years old.
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German-is-easy
Can’t argue with Belle Lettre :).
Reply  2 years ago
Manni
Dear German-is-easy,
You said that there is no difference between the simple past and the perfect past in German, but what if you
were to translate an English sentence in the PERFECT PAST tense to German? for example, “I’ve seen
him” ….. Would “Ich habe ihn gesehen” and “Ich sah ihn” make no difference? Please explain, and thanks
for your beautiful and insightful lessons :)
Cheers. Manni
German-is-easy
Well.. it does make a difference, yes… but not in meaning… the difference is in how it sounds and that depends on the
context….
if you’re talking about a movie then you should say “Ich habe ihn gesehen”…. one could argue that the form does convey
somewhat the idea of the English present perfect.. but then again, there is
“I saw it in 3D” as opposed to “I’ve seen it in 3D” the former being common enough I’d say.
And still you ought to use the haben-past in German…. so I think it is pointless to look for parallels in meaning.
If you are talking about some guy you saw at the beach you could use either version but I still would go with the haben-
version… the other one just doesn’t sound as odd as in the film example… and yet.. again.. depending on context… so
really… the choice in German depends on whether you write a story or you talk and which verb in which meaning you
are using…the English version (simple past or present perfect) is NO indication at all, what it will be in German
Anonymous
Through all of my German lessons it has boggled my mind as to why the “spoken past” was always used instead of
the “written past” when the latter seems so much simpler and easier to handle: no need to decide if I should use haben
or sein with the past tense, no need to worry about moving a verb to the end of a sentence, etc. I guess from being an
English speaker it sounds so much more fluid and infernal using the written past and so much more formal/what
you’d learn in a classroom when using the spoken past.
So I guess I should stop using the written past and go back to using the spoken past. At least you saved me from
sounding like an idiot when I visit Germany!
German-is-easy
Yeah you should use spoken past… with the exceptions of the modals and the few words I will discuss in the next
posts :)
The spoken past is representing German better than the written one. We LOVE our final verb. German sentence
order is so that the closer to the end you get the more crucial the information is…. we like this pending of things
and the big conclusion at the end. It is the most defining feature of German I would Subscribe
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The reason why the modals do work with the written past could very well be that they usually come with another
verb which will do the nice close… using the spoken one there would lead to a verb cluster at the end…
Tofer
Is ‘worden’ ever used for this purpose in spoken German or would it just sound weird? For example, would
something like “Ich weiß nicht, ob die E-Mail schon abgeschickt worden ist.” (which I would read as “I don’t know if
the e-mail has already been sent” rather than “I don’t know if the e-mail was sent”) ever be used in the spoken
language? From my understanding ‘worden’ can only be used in passive constructions, so in the example from
Manni’s post it would be akin to saying “He has been seen by me” (which would probably make most native English
speakers giggle if someone were to say it even if it isn’t necessarily wrong) if I’m not mistaken. I’m just wondering…
if this construction is available in the passive why isn’t there an equivalent in the active test? Or is there?
Anyway, thanks again for another great post!
German-is-easy
So…worden is definitely used also in spoken and it is appropriate whenever passive makes sense… your example
would sound weird in German too but it is not wrong.
As for worden vs. wurde….
Ich wurde angerufen – I was being called.

Ich bin angerufen worden – I have been called.
and here an example with the other passive:
Das Bild wurde gemalt. – The picture was being painted / the picture was painted.
Das Bild ist gemalt worden – The picture has been painted / The picture was painted.
Das Bild ist gemalt. – The picture is /has been painted.
Das Bild war gemalt. – The pciture wsa painted (as opposed to printed)
Das Bild war gemalt worden. – The picture had been painted.
I know this isn’t probably of much help but passive is a huge topic :)… hope I could answer yur question. If not,
just ask again
Grateful Reader
A small difference arises when one adds some word that “enhances the perfective aspect”, so to say. One can’t write “Er
sah ihn schon”, only “Er hat/hatte ihn schon gesehen”. In this respect there still is a meaningful, not simply stylistic
difference between the german simple and perfect past tenses. Or at least so I have read ;) There are more, but that’s
another story.
Grateful Reader
To be more clear: the difference arises, when a past action is somehow relevant to the present moment.
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5 years ago
German-is-easy
Actually, we don’t even need such a word. The “spoken past” itself does enhance the perfect aspect… the ge-
prefix once did exactly this… underline that the action has been completed.
– Ich las.
sounds a lot like
– I was reading… when something else happened.
– Ich habe gelesen
sounds a lot like
– I read, I have read (and now I am done)
In spoken German people will express the first version (the progressive one) using other ways
– Ich war gerade am lesen… als…

– Ich habe gerade gelesen … als…
Without that it sounds a little weird:
– Ich habe gelesen als du angerufe hast.
It is not wrong at all… but with “grad” it sounds so much better. So yeah… the spoken past definitely has a
perfective notion to it. But I think most of our daily conversation consists of stuff that goes well with this
notion…
– Ich habe gekocht, eingekauft, gearbeitet….
The other one is suitable for more “complex” stories but by now the spoken past has become so dominant that an
account strictly using the real past sounds… like a novel :)
But for a beginner this is nothing to worry about. Those things will come over time by just being exposed to the
language.
namsskogan
Your articles are execellent because they demystifies the german language in a humorous way. This article
about the spoken past explains why it never sounds right when I try to speak german, although I have no
problem reading german books. I guess I have read too many books in german… But now I will follow
your advices and impress my german wife.
German-is-easy
Hahaha…. I had the same experience a bit in French… I had read sooo much and I ended up sounding like I was
narrating things constantly (so I was told) :)…anyway… reading is awesome though and I think it is the key to profound
understanding of a language
Jana P
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I am such a fan of your blog, I am always learning fantastic stuff through it – things that a dictionary won’t
tell you, and also that most German teachers won’t tell you, either because they think it’s too detailed and
unnecessary, or because they can’t explain.
Anyway, just a little note from a language learner – I was repeatedly told what you said, that the ‘written
past’ is unnecessary, and, because I was trying to fast-track my learning, I was only too happy to drop it
and focus on more useful stuff… And then I came to Germany, and suddenly had lots of problems
understanding what people said. Not just the newspapers and books, but what people said, what signs
said…
For example, I remember clearly sitting in a kitchen in a WG, and a friend came in to report that girl X had
just learnt how to roll cigarettes, and “sie aussahen wie Joints.” I have heard that Präteritum gets used more
in the south, and she was Austrian, so maybe that’s the reason, but this was a very informal occasion, and I
had a moment of total panic, because ‘aussah’ was not in my active German vocabulary.
I think that dropping the ‘written past’ works at the very beginning of your studies, because there is so
much grammar to master, but it definitely needs to be learned before one can hold a half-reasonable
conversation. And it’s also much easier to learn irregular verbs when you learn both pasts together, because
the rules of irregularity are easier to get a feel for… I’m not disagreeing with everything you say (I’m a
fan, truly), but I noticed my language skills really shot up the moment I actually learnt Präteritum. So I
don’t think it’s exactly archaic/never used/completely old-fashioned. Maybe German teachers around the
world underestimate its frequency…?
Thank you for your work. I hope you will publish a book one day :)
German-is-easy
Hehe… well, aussehen just so happens to be one of the ones where you use the written past :)…. for those ones you
indeed must know it to hold conversation (like… gab, dachte, sah, fand)… and I think you are also right that the south is
a little more written past prone and as for Austria I really can’t make any assumptions. Maybe they use written past all
the time. But for Germany-German I really think except for the exception it is not needed… to speak that is. In books you
see only written past.. Especially the du-form does sound archaic… Was trankst du gestern abend?… that is just
soooooooo weird. I even have difficulties pronouncing it. Anyway… you will have to check the list of exceptions when I
post it and make sure that I didn’t forget one :)…
Grateful Reader
Normalerweise wird das Gegenteil behauptet, nämlich dass das Präteritum besonders häufig im Norden benutzt wird.
Z.B. Wiki (aber nicht nur Wiki!): “In den Mundarten und der Alltagssprache in der Mitte und im Süden des deutschen
Sprachgebiets ist das Präteritum bis auf Reliktformen (war und wollte) verschwunden, während es im Norden
Deutschlands – recht stark vom Perfekt abgegrenzt – auch in mündlicher Sprache benutzt wird.”
Was ich gemerkt habe, als ich versuchte, mir deutsche Fernsehsendungen anzugucken, ist dass das Präteritum oft in
Übersetzungen ausländischer Filme benutzt wird, wobei alle möglichen Formen verwendet werden können, wie “Wir
aßen…” – und das in angeblichen Gesprächen! Ich nehme an, es könnte vom Unterschied zwischen den Sprachen
verursacht werden, d.h. Englische Sätze und Wörter sind üblicherweise kürzer und es kann schwierig werden, sie auf
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solche Weise zu übersetzen, dass sie immer noch für eine synchrone Übersetzung gelten würden. Man vergleiche “we
ate” und “wir haben gegessen”. ;)
German-is-easy
Du hast vollkommen Recht… das Präteritum wird im Norden viel stärker benutzt und der Trend, alles mit ge-
form zu sagen, kommt aus dem Süden. Ich habe das auch vor einer Weile gelesen (“Ich glaube in der fetten
Duden-Grammatik, die ich dir empfohlen hab’) aber ich hatte vergessen, was für einen Unfug ich in den
Kommentar geschrieben hab’. Also DANKE!!!! :D
Ich glaube, mein Gedankengang war in etwa so “Ich komme aus Berlin und ich rede fast nur mit ge-form. Berlin
ist im Norden. Also muss das Präteritum wohl südlicher sein… zumal die da ja eh etwas konservativer unterwegs
sind” So kann man sich irren :D
Jacob
Hi, I have a question. When someone says something like, “Das Wort wird im Norden benutzt” are they
saying “The word will be used in the North”? I’ve seen German sentences where the infinitive was dropped in
the future tense, like the one I gave. Is that correct? Do Germans sometimes drop the infinitive? Shouldn’t it
technically be “Das Word wird im Norden benutzt sein”? Or is it okay to drop the “sein” since it would be
understood? My German teacher told me Germans say “Kann ich zur Toilette?” and leave off “gehen”, and
I’ve seen “Die Mauer muss weg!” and I’m assuming that has an infinitive left off. Thank you!
juliaosteopath
Hi Manni, I’m sure Emanuel will reply better but your sentence is actually using the passive tense not future.
German uses werden for the passive tense not sein. They are saying ‘the word is used in the north’. For
passive werden combines with the past participle. In English to be is also combined with the past participle.
Hope that helps.
German-is-easy
You’re right that German does drop a verb sometimes but it’s not the case here. This is just like Julia already
said passive. And because it is an ongoing process it’s the “werden”-passive.
I haven’t talked about the passive yet but here are some sentences that might help:
– It is used a lot. (in the process of being used a lot)

– Es wird viel benutzt.
– It will be used a lot.

– Es wird viel benutzt werden.
– It will be completely painted next Monday.

– Es wird nächsten Montag fertig gemalt sein.
-It will be painted starting next Monday.

– Es wird ab nächsten Montag gemalt werden.
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Hope that helps :)
cmalbrecht
When I was beginning German (being naive) and saw that we say: ich gehe where in English we say I’m
going, I thought this was a lack. German wasn’t as sophisticated as English or something. Now, in a more
enlightened frame of mind, I see that people in any country can say anything they like; it’s just a matter of
usage as we say, I went Germans say ich bin gegangen, usw. They don’t have to say it that way; it’s just the
common way of saying it and therefore it sounds “right”. When studying a language we just have to
remember that what we learn is simply the way people talk in that language.
I really enjoy these blogs. They really clarify and point up lots of little things and help refresh the memory
as well. Besten dank!
German-is-easy
Gern geschehen :)
cmalbrecht
Now you’ve got me a little confused (actually I was born confused). You say haben, wollen and können
are usually used in the written past. Maybe you could show some examples. Or do you mean it would
sound stupid to say: Ich habe schlafen gehen gewollt (or something like that)?
German-is-easy
Sorry for the confusion :). I will talk about all this in more detail in the posts to come and there will be gazillion
examples… your example is wrong though, grammatically. It should be:
Gestern habe ich schlafen gehen wollen.
This is a grammatical irregularity that makes no sense and yet it is there. When you combine 3 verbs and one is a
participle then the participle becomes the infinitive form. I will discuss this in more detail later on.
You could use either version (ich wollte, ich habe gehen wollen) and it sounds fine… however, “Ich habe einen Kaffee
gewollt” sounds weird. So I think usin the participle of the modals and haben is actually what makes it odd sounding…
but I am getting ahead of myself :)
Alexander_
Can y tell how when we now when we use VER,GE,and BE in german language exampe and does ge
always go with habe,hatte,war,ware tnx:)
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German-is-easy
I am not sure if I understood your question correctly but I think maybe the second part of the past tense will clear up a
lot… here is the link :):
http://yourdailygerman.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/german-past-tense-2/
Dave
I love your blog! I’m just starting to learn German, and your lessons both very entertaining and super
useful. There’s one little English/German-shared-history bit that I think you missed out on, though. In your
“Wie oft fuhrst du…” example, you use “thou have” while the conjugation should be “thou hast”, one of
the few holdovers of German conjugation left in (archaic-sounding) English!
German-is-easy
Yeah someone recently told me that because I had used a similar construction in another post and I was REALLY
surprised about how similar this used to be :)… thanks for the nice comment and have fun learning … despite the cases
:D
Benj
Really helpful once again, thanks, especially the spoken and written part as what is learned and what is
used in every day life are so often different. I read the newspaper everyday here in Austria and wondered
why everything was written in the “written past” instead of the “spoken past”, which is what I mostly
know. Your explanations “keep it real”! Much appreciated.
German-is-easy
:D danke
Bernard
First off all, I’d like to thank you for a very informative and entertaining way of teaching the German
language. I’m very new to learning German and this might be a stupid question and I apologize in advance.
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In your example: I have been to Paris

You translated it as: Ich bin in Paris gewesen
but in my little knowledge in German, I would have translated it as: Ich habe in Paris gewesen
Hope you could enlighten me in the matter. Thanks
German-is-easy
Hey, thanks for your nice feedback :)… as for your question… the verb “sein” builds its spoken past with the helper
“sein”.
So it is
– Ich bin gewesen.
and not
– Ich habe gewesen.
In English its done with “to have” but that’s no surprise since English does all of them using “to have”. Anyway… also in
French it is done using “to have” although French does use “sein” as a helper for past too. So… German just uses “sein”
but there is no deeper logic to it :)
Alma
This is incredibly amuzing. You are so funny! I have been trying to learn German on my own, never could.
And now I don’t want to stop learning (reading your tutorial). So great! Thank you for writing this. It is
incredible.
German-is-easy
Thanks soo much for this nice feedback. It’s really motivating :)
Anonymous
It is very cool! I am a very beginner. I like your blog!
Anonymous
Great Post !.Thx a lot !
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ttimeea
Hy…I love the way you explain everything is called german :).
I want to ask you which are those written past verbs used in spoken past?
thank you
German-is-easy
That’s for part 3… which I keep procrastinating :). But I think I should do it soon as it’s been ages since I started with
this. Anyway… a very very rough hint: the most common verbs tend to use the written past (können, wollen, haben, sein,
sehen, wissen, gehen, kommen, geben…)… but more on that in the post.
mgraves82
Have you made this post yet??? I can’t find it anywhere! :D
German-is-easy
Which one? The one about written past? No, I’ve yet to do it (shame on me, I know). I’ll do it this winter!
phil
I’m confused.
So we have spoken past and written past, but usually spoken past is used. So:
I saw a bird.
Ich sah einen Vogel.
I have seen a bird.

Ich habe einen Vogel gesehen.
In German you’d usually say ‘Ich habe einen Vogel gesehen’ because it’s spoken past…but that doesn’t
translate as ‘I saw a bird’. I’m confused because i’m trying to think of any circumstances where you’d say
‘I have seen a…’ in English. If you’re describing the past you’d usually say ‘I saw..’.
So am i right in thinking that this ‘I have seen a bird.’ is being translated literally to English, but in reality
if you say it it really means ‘I saw’ in German?
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Precisely :)… when you dig really deep you will find some differences in meaning between the spoken and the written
past but it is not like English where it really matters and is super obvious.
berlingrabers
The fact of the matter is that the German present perfect is a past tense, while the English one isn’t.
That’s all there is to it. “I have seen” just doesn’t mean “Ich habe gesehen.” That’s not necessarily true the
other way around, especially if you throw in a “schon mal,” but the meanings of English verb forms are a
lot more precisely defined.
“Ich habe gesehen” means “I saw.”
“I have seen” means “Mein aktueller Zustand ist, dass ich irgendwann gesehen habe.”
That’s why you never ever ever ever name a point in time when using the present perfect in English (ever).
Emanuel, I know your German brain has a hard time with it, but it really and truly is a present tense. I
really appreciate the whole explanation of the forms in German, but I think English speakers need to
realize very early on that German verb forms just don’t map onto English ones and that a lot of the
information they’re used to conveying just by using the right verb form needs adverbs and such to come
across in German.
The sheer futility of trying to express succinctly what you’d “been doing” in German is really
heartbreaking.
German-is-easy
I had to re-read the post to understand what you were alluding to and then I saw my bold statement. You’re right…
present perfect is a “present tense” in that it talks about the status quo (as a result of what happened in the past). The
German spoken past is essentially the same, just that it doesn’t focus on the present.
– Ich habe ein Buch gekauft.

– I’ve bought a book.
The German sentence sounds like it is talking mainly about the buying, instead of the having. And it’s indeed hard for a
native speaker of German to not see it that way, and it’s the source of many mistakes in the use of the English tenses.
I think I’m going to let the sentence stand as it is though. Many people reading this are not native speakers and the perfect
tense in the Romance language is closer to German in that you can indeed add a “yesterday” to it. They are likely to
perceive present perfect to be about the past, too so I hope it’s fine if I acknowledge how an English speaker sees it and
then ignore it :).
I do fully agree that people learning German MUST not map. Not the perfect tense although it looks similar, not
continuous, and not all those woulds and coulds. It does set you up for failure. I say this all the time in lectures so if there
is anything suggesting that mapping is fine in this post… please please tell me and I’ll remove it.
Oh and thanks for the comment. It was another needed reminder for my own use of the present perfect and many people
read the comments so they’ll find this very helpful too.
berlingrabers
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You’re actually probably right not to change anything in this post – I was really responding more to Phil’s confusion
than anything you actually wrote. There are some sample translations in part 2 of the past tense series that I do think
you should change to simple past, but you are really very clear here about the difference. Sorry to rant about it! I
guess I was venting some of that long-term frustration of an English-speaking German learner having to force myself
not to hear the English meanings in the German forms and not knowing how to specify time information the way I’m
used to.
Is/was part 3 meant to talk about “war” vs. “ist gewesen” at all? That’s always kind of mystifying; 99% of the time
“sein” in the past is “war,” then out of the blue somebody tosses out an “ist gewesen” and I really can’t see a logic to
why. This evening it was a friend mentioning that the author of “Winnetou” never visited America at all – “er ist nie
dort gewesen.” Why? For that matter, in biblical studies there are some German phrases often quoted from the old
critical scholars, one of them being “wie es eigentlich gewesen ist” (referring to the effort to reconstruct the historical
background of ancient texts). Why the perfect there?
Any hints would be much appreciated, but if I have to I’ll try to hold out for part 3. :)
German-is-easy
Oh no worries…. I didn’t hear any ranting, I heard passion :).

As for “war vs gewesen”, yes, technically that will be part of part 3 (and possibly maybe 4) but for this particular
pair it really just comes down to personal preference and possibly region. ”
– “Er war nie dort” and

– “Er ist nie dort gewesen”
are exactly the same to me. There is a difference in rhythm so in some situations one or the other just sounds
better. Take for example questions… I reckon it’s rather rare to hear
– Bist du schon in blah gewesen?
It’s long and boring and also the initial “bist” evokes present tense and makes people expect things like “müde” or
“sauer” to follow, in daily conversation.
Of course there might be this one very specific sentence in which “war” and “ist gewesen” do express slightly
different things, but generally they’re the same… story’s different for stuff like “fand – habe gefunden” but more
on that in about a decade in part 3… kidding, I hope to get to it sooner.
Cathi
Please Please Please do the next part – the stuff about when to use präteritum in spoken. I’m even
considering bribery…
German-is-easy
Uhm… I … uhm… probably not this year. I really want to finish that one book before Christmas (because I’m a sell-out
:) and I can’t focus. But I’ll do it eventually and library is a good idea too… oh wait… that’s not what you wrote, is it :D
Cathi Subscribe for free

Das wäre super! Nächste woche! Vielen vielen Dank! Ich hatte nicht geglaubt, dass du so bald das Präteritum 3
schreiben würde! Du bist die Liebe meines Lebens! Danke nochmals! :D :D :D
German-is-easy
Guter Versuch :D
Edu
I loved the BAD joke with sound effect, only thank you. Your post on adjective endings, really saved my
life, I know get them 80% correct without trying. YOUR UNICORN WISDOM is awesome.
German-is-easy
Haha… yeah, that sound is just classic :). Glad to hear the adjective stuff works so well for you!!
Ampity Rocks (@ampityrocks)
Totally awesome site man!!…been living in and struggling since 3 years to learn German (up to VHS
B1), because my dumb brain always needs to ask ‘why’, or is wired the wrong way for learning languages.
Your fun teaching approach truly helps folks like me, so thank you kindly!!!!
But do have a question (thumbs are pressed really hard: )…Is there a German “sentence structure”
blueprint or something?
While I’ve studied and in theory ‘get’ all the structures (questions, side sentences etc), and can understand
95% of conversation…still can’t seem to put together a grammatically correct sentence. Like everything is
friggen wrong, all the friggen time…quickly pointed out by my german girlfriend. Haha okay sidetrack,
but maybe you’ve had students with the same problem?
I never learnt English grammar, so ‘present perfect’ stuff means very little too, is that perhaps the problem?
Dayam you Physics: )
Truly appreciate any tips or guidance man…and thanks again for the amazeballs site!!
German-is-easy
Haha… thanks for that nice feedback. Danke :).

Is there a blueprint for sentence structure? Well, as we’d say in German “jein” (yes and no combined).
Subscribe
There are certain things which are very very strict and can definitely be called rules but as for for just
the rest there’s freetrends.
The rules are mainly about where to put the verb, the trends are about in which order to place the elements like time,
place or objects.
I don’t have it fully covered yet but these posts might help you:
https://yourdailygerman.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/german-main-clause-sentence-structure/
https://yourdailygerman.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/german-word-order/
https://yourdailygerman.wordpress.com/2015/01/15/german-word-order-explained/
https://yourdailygerman.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/german-word-order-3/
The first one is about where to put the verb in normal sentences and it’s pretty blueprinty while the other mini-series is
basically about how everything else is incredibly complex… or free and intuitive if you open your mind :)
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05/02/2019 Learn German Online – German Past Tense | German is easy!

Learn German Online – German Past Tense

and welcome to our German is Easy- Learn German Online

The Most Important Thing Ever

That’s right. I think it is that crucial. Now you may say

Ich trinke einen Kaffee.

Ich gehe nach Hause.

der Marktstand (the market stand) –

Ich stehe auf. (I get up)

der Zug (the train) –

Ich ziehe. (I pull.)

Past tense in German

I have seen a bird.

I have been to Paris.

And consequently this:

He ordered a tea and began reading the newspaper.

Er bestellte einen Tee und fing an, die Zeitung zu lesen.

Wie oft fuhrst du diesen Winter Ski?

This is what Google Translator translates it to

How many times have you went skiing this winter?

So… a quick recap and then we’re done for today.

German Past Tense – Part 2

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:) a very informative (and funny) post.

thanks! Keep it up!

 Reply  6 years ago

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Can’t argue with Belle Lettre :).

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Anyway, thanks again for another great post!

Reply   6 years ago

Ich wurde angerufen – I was being called.

and here an example with the other passive:

Reply  6 years ago

Reply   5 years ago

sounds a lot like

– I was reading… when something else happened.

– Ich habe gelesen

sounds a lot like

– I read, I have read (and now I am done)

– Ich war gerade am lesen… als…

Without that it sounds a little weird:

– Ich habe gelesen als du angerufe hast.

– Ich habe gekocht, eingekauft, gearbeitet….

Reply  5 years ago

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Reply  3 years ago

– It is used a lot. (in the process of being used a lot)

– It will be used a lot.