Endings & the strong-verb vowel shift

Regular present endings on the stem: -e, -st, -t, -en, -t, -en. Many strong verbs also change their stem vowel in the du and er/sie/es forms:

Note: the vowel shift is only du and er/sie/es (du liest, er nimmt, du läufst, er spricht). German also uses the present for the near future: Morgen fahre ich nach Bonn.

haben / sein + past participle

The everyday spoken past. Choose the auxiliary, then park the past participle at the end of the clause:

• haben — transitive verbs and most others: Ich habe einen Film gesehen.
• sein — verbs of motion (gehen, kommen, fahren, laufen, fliegen) and change of state (werden, bleiben, sterben, aufwachen), plus sein and passieren: Ich bin nach Berlin gefahren.

Watch: bleiben takes sein even though there is no movement (Ich bin zu Hause geblieben), and so does sein itself (Ich bin dort gewesen).

Which auxiliary? (motion)

Which auxiliary? (transitive)

ge-…-t, ge-…-en & the exceptions

Three patterns cover almost everything:

• Weak: ge- + stem + -t — machen → gemacht, sagen → gesagt, arbeiten → gearbeitet.
• Strong: ge- + (changed) stem + -en — sehen → gesehen, gehen → gegangen, sprechen → gesprochen.
• No ge-: inseparable prefixes (ver-, be-, er-, ent-) and -ieren verbs — verstehen → verstanden, besuchen → besucht, studieren → studiert.

Separable verbs slot the ge- in the middle: aufmachen → aufgemacht, fernsehen → ferngesehen, ankommen → angekommen.

Your turn — a weak participle

Your turn — a full perfect (sein)

Fill the past correctly

The narrative past

The simple past is the tense of written narrative (novels, reports, essays). Weak verbs insert -te-; strong verbs change the vowel and take no ending in the ich/er forms:

In speech German prefers the perfect — except for sein (war), haben (hatte) and the modals (konnte, musste, wollte…), which are used in the Präteritum even when talking.

A modal in the past

Your turn — Präteritum of sein

hatte / war + participle — the "past-before-past"

The Plusquamperfekt describes what had already happened before another past event. Same auxiliary rule as the perfect, but in the Präteritum:

• Ich hatte schon gegessen, als er kam. — I had already eaten when he came.
• Sie war früh angekommen. — she had arrived early (motion → war).
• It pairs naturally with nachdem: Nachdem ich gegessen hatte, ging ich schlafen.

Sequence with nachdem: the nachdem-clause is one step further back in time, so it takes the pluperfect while the main clause takes the Präteritum/perfect.

After nachdem

werden + infinitive

Futur I puts a conjugated werden in position 2 and the infinitive at the end:

• Ich werde morgen kommen. — I will come tomorrow.
• Wir werden nächstes Jahr nach Wien fahren.
• It also expresses probability: Er wird wohl krank sein. — He is probably ill.

Everyday German often uses the present with a time phrase instead (Morgen fahre ich…) — but the true future with werden reads well in essays and is essential for the probability sense.

Building the future

Your turn — the perfect in full

Your turn — the future in full

Perfect: sein or haben?

Sort each verb by the auxiliary it takes in the perfect.

Match the infinitive to its participle

Tap an infinitive on the left, then its Partizip II on the right.

Your tense toolkit

Cluster 5 zooms in on modal verbs and infinitive constructions — modals, zu+infinitive and the double infinitive. Press Finish.