Talking About Your Past -- Perfekt Tense

Welcome to one of the most important grammar topics at the A2 level: the Perfekt tense. In everyday spoken German, people almost always use Perfekt rather than the simple past (Präteritum) when talking about things that happened before now. If you want to tell a friend what you did yesterday, describe your weekend, or explain your life story at the Ausländerbehörde, you need Perfekt. The basic structure is straightforward: you use a helper verb (either haben or sein) in the present tense, and then add the Partizip II (past participle) at the end of the sentence. For example: Ich habe gestern Deutsch gelernt. (I learned German yesterday.) Notice how 'habe' is in the second position and 'gelernt' gös to the very end. This word order is non-negotiable in German. The helper verb is always in the second position of a main clause, and the past participle always gös to the end. Think of it like a sandwich: the important action information is at the two ends, and everything else (time expressions, objects, etc.) gös in the middle. Most verbs use haben as their helper verb. These include transitive verbs (verbs that take a direct object) like kaufen (to buy), essen (to eat), trinken (to drink), machen (to do/make), and lesen (to read). To form the Partizip II of regular verbs, you take the verb stem, add ge- at the beginning and -t at the end. For example: machen becomes ge-mach-t, lernen becomes ge-lern-t, kaufen becomes ge-kauf-t. So a complete sentence looks like: Ich habe ein Buch gekauft. (I bought a book.) Or: Wir haben Pizza gegessen. (We ate pizza.) Note that 'essen' is irregular -- its Partizip II is 'gegessen', not 'geesst'. Irregular verbs are one of the challenges of German, and you simply need to memorize their past participle forms. Some common irregular Partizip II forms include: trinken - getrunken, schreiben - geschrieben, sprechen - gesprochen, lesen - gelesen, nehmen - genommen, geben - gegeben, sehen - gesehen, finden - gefunden. A useful pattern: many irregular past participles end in -en rather than -t, and often the vowel in the stem changes. Write these down in a vocabulary notebook and review them regularly. Practice forming simple sentences about your day: Ich habe Kaffee getrunken. Ich habe eine E-Mail geschrieben. Ich habe ferngesehen. (I watched TV -- note 'fernsehen' is a separable verb, which we will cover shortly.)