German grammar by topic › German past tenses: Perfekt and Präteritum, explained

German past tenses: Perfekt and Präteritum, explained

In conversation, German talks about the past with the Perfekt: a form of haben or sein plus a past participle at the end of the sentence. Ich habe Kaffee getrunken. Wir sind nach Hamburg gefahren.

The Präteritum (ich trank, wir fuhren) is the tense of written stories and reports. A few very common verbs use it in speech too: war, hatte, and the modal verbs (konnte, musste, wollte).

The essentials

Most verbs form the Perfekt with haben: Ich habe gearbeitet.
Verbs of movement and change of state take sein: Ich bin gelaufen. Er ist eingeschlafen. Bleiben and sein do too: Sie ist zu Hause geblieben.
Regular participles are ge- + stem + -t (gemacht); irregular ones end in -en and often change the vowel (getrunken, geschrieben).
No ge- after an unstressed prefix or in verbs ending in -ieren: Ich habe es verstanden. Wir haben telefoniert.
The Plusquamperfekt (hatte gemacht, war gefahren) says what had already happened before another past event.

Every lesson on this topic

Each lesson has a full explanation, examples you can listen to, and exercises with answers.

A1 (the A1 course)

Talking about the past: the Perfekt with haben: Ich habe gespielt, ich habe gegessen: haben + participle at the end
The Perfekt with sein: ich bin gefahren: Verbs of movement and change take sein: gehen, fahren, kommen, aufstehen, bleiben
Participles without ge-, and eingekauft: studiert, bezahlt, verstanden have no ge-; separable verbs put ge- in the middle: eingekauft
war and hatte: the past of sein and haben: Ich war müde, ich hatte keine Zeit: the simple past of sein and haben in speech

A2 (the A2 course)

Modal verbs in the past: konnte, musste, wollte: The simple past of modal verbs, used in speech and in writing
Telling what happened: the Perfekt in conversation: Talk about your weekend: haben or sein, the participle at the end, and the order of time, manner and place

B1 (the B1 course)

The Präteritum: telling a story in writing: The simple past of regular, irregular and mixed verbs: machte, ging, dachte.
The Plusquamperfekt: hatte gemacht, war gegangen: Say what had already happened before another past event, often with nachdem.

C2 (the C2 course)

The literary Präteritum and old Konjunktiv II forms: Strong past forms you meet mainly in novels (schwieg, mied, glich), literary Konjunktiv II (ginge, stürbe, hülfe) and free indirect speech.

In the app, these lessons are taught one idea at a time with audio, practised with questions that explain the rule when you slip, and brought back for review on later days.

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