German Past Tense

Weak Verbs - The word stem stays the same, and you need to add these endings:

• ich - te
• du - test
• er - te
• wir - ten
• ihr - tet
• sie - ten

Example of weak verbs - ich mache -> ich machte

Moving Verbs - Verbs that indicate movement take sein

e.g. -> ich bin gestiegen

All other verbs - all other verbs take haben 

e.g. -> ich habe gegessen 

Sentence Structure -> subj haben/sein obj past participle

There is no way to guess the past participle of verbs - you need to learn them!

The perfect tense is used to describe events in the past, more common in spoken German,

Strong Verbs - The word stem changes and takes these verb endings:

• ich - no ending
• du - st
• er - no ending
• wir - en
• ihr - t
• sie - en

Modal (or mixed) verbs don't change the stem but take the strong endings (as above).