Hi, this is Laura from MosaLingua. Welcome back to our series of
German grammar hacks. Today, I am going to talk about
the “Perfekt” tense.
It is the tense you use for almost all verbs when you are speaking about the past,
and being able to speak German is your goal, isn’t it? ;) For many verbs
the "Perfekt" is quite straightforward. There are 2 steps: STEP 1: Take the
present form of the verb “haben,” which you should already know from one of our
previous videos: ich habe - du hast - er, sie,es hat - wir haben - ihr habt - sie/Sie haben.
Then, add the verb you want to use.
STEP 2: This verb should be in the past participle/"Partizip II" form.
For regular verbs, take the infinitive root minus -en, add ge- at the beginning
and -t at the end. For example, for "lernen," you get “gelernt.”
So if you want to say, "I have learned," you merge Ich habe + gelernt → Ich habe gelernt.
This pattern is followed by many verbs such as "sagen" = to say
-> ich habe gesagt, spielen-> ich habe gespielt, wohnen -> ich habe gewohnt.
Easy, don’t you think?
Of course, life would be too easy if there were no exceptions!
For example, the Partizip II form can end in “-en” as well. Take the verb "sehen" = to see.
You don’t say “Ich habe geseht,” but rather “Ich habe gesehen.”
Don’t worry! The first version might not be correct, but
people would still understand you. So I told you that to talk about the past, the first step is
to use the present of "haben" plus Partizip II.
Actually, for some verbs involving a movement or a change of state, you’ll need the verb "sein" instead.
Let’s start with the verb “fahren” = to drive. The Partizip II form is “gefahren.” There is a
movement from A to B with this verb, so you have to say “ich bin gefahren,” “du bist gefahren,” “er/sie
ist gefahren,” "wir sind gefahren," "ihr seid gefahren," "sie/Sie sind gefahren."
The same applies to common verbs like “gehen” (to go) or “kommen” (to come), but also
“aufwachen” (wake up) and “einschlafen” (fall asleep). The change of state is between awake and not awake!
The last thing I would like to mention about the Perfekt tense is word order.
Let’s start with an example: "Ich habe gestern einen Film im Kino gesehen."
Did you notice how the Partizip II (“gesehen”) was at the end of the sentence?
This is a general and very important rule whenever you have two parts of a verb form in German.
The conjugated form goes in the second position of the sentence, and the other part is placed at the end.
I think you'll realize that the best way to learn when to use
“haben” and when to use “sein,” and the correct word order
is with practice. Little by little
the tense will start coming naturally to you. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes
and get corrected. Soon enough you will start talking about the past automatically.
Thanks for watching this video. Keep on learning,
and see you next time!