Sage-Tips

How do you form the imperfect tense in German?

The imperfect tense is generally used for things that happened regularly or for descriptions in the past, especially in written German. The imperfect of weak verbs is formed using the same stem of the verb as for the present tense + these endings: -te, -test, -te, -ten, -tet, -ten.

What are the two most important rules when forming the present perfect tense in German?

The perfect tense is formed with the present tense of haben or sein and a past participle. The past participle begins in ge- and ends in -t for weak verbs, in ge- and -en for strong verbs often with a stem vowel change, and in ge- and -t for mixed verbs, with a stem vowel change.

What are the auxiliary verbs in German in the perfect tense?

It’s really important that you know all the present tense forms of haben and sein, as these are the two auxiliary verbs that ‘help’ the past participle. To form the perfect tense, you use the present tense of haben and sein as the auxiliary verb.

How do you use Sein in German?

You can use sein in the Präteritum (literary past tense) to say that something was something or somewhere. Er war im Urlaub. (He was on vacation.) The German Präteritum is often referred to as the literary past tense because it’s primarily used in formal writing, such as books, newspapers and professional emails.

What is the difference between the perfect and imperfect tense in German?

The imperfect tense is different to the perfect tense because it tends to be used to describe one particular event in the past, rather than things that have happened in the past in general. For example, you may want to describe a particular concert you went to or a holiday you had.

What is Präteritum in German?

The Präteritum is equivalent to the English Simple Past tense, so to speak. But usually, the Präteritum is not used in everyday language in German. It is rather used as a literary language. Germans commonly opt for the Perfekt in their speech in order to refer to the past – which will be discussed in my upcoming post.

What is the plusquamperfekt in German?

Past Perfect Tense
The Past Perfect Tense (das Plusquamperfekt) in German: In German, as in English, the past perfect describes a time previous to another in the past. It is constructed just like the present perfect tense, except that the auxiliary “haben” or “sein” is in its simple past form: “hatte” or “war.”

What is Praeteritum in German?

How do you conjugate ‘E’ to an ‘I’ in German?

First, there is the verb whose stem changes the vowel from an ‘e’ to an ‘i’, like geben (pronounced: GEHB-ehn, ‘to give’), and essen (pronounced: EHSS-ehn, ‘to eat’). These verbs have the regular conjugated endings, but in the du and er/sie/es form it’s ‘e’ changes to an ‘i’. Let’s see a couple examples:

What is the German equivalent of “to play” in English?

The verb “to play” in English is the infinitive form (“he plays“ is a conjugated form). The German equivalent of “to play” is spielen. Each verb also has a stem form, the basic part of the verb left after you remove the -en ending. For spielen the stem is spiel.

What are the endings of German verbs in the present tense?

The Basics. That is, the verb changes its stem vowel, but the endings are the same as for any other regular verb in the present tense. Note that all stem changes only occur with the singular pronouns/person du and the third person singular ( er , sie , es ). The first person singular ( ich) and all the plural forms do NOT change.

Is German a regular or irregular language?

Sam is from the UK but lives in the USA, she has taught college German and has both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in German Studies German has both regular verbs and irregular verbs. It also has stem changing verbs. These like to appear like regular verbs with a few differences.