The Perfekt Tense in German

We’re finally going to learn to talk about past events in German! You’re about to learn what’s called the ‘present perfect’ tense in English, or Das Perfekt in German. (Don’t be confused by the word ‘present’ -- this is a past tense that talks about past events -- it’s the English terminology that’s confusing.) Although there are two different past tenses in German (as in English), the Perfekt that you are learning is used most often in conversational (spoken) German. You will learn the other past tense (the narrative or simple past tense) in second-semester German.

The first thing we need to talk about when learning to form the Perfekt is the difference between strong and weak verbs in German. We have the same difference in English, too. Consider the following examples:

Like English, German has a group of ‘regular’ (termed ‘weak’) verbs that always add a -t ending for the past participle, but another very different group of ‘irregular’ (termed ‘strong’) verbs that add an -en. We will be learning both kinds today, but for just now, we’re going to focus on the (easier) weak verbs.

To form the past participle of the German Perfekt tense for weak verbs, you need to take the stem of the verb (the infinitive minus the -en ending) and add a ge- prefix and a -t suffix.

There are two exceptions to this nice regularity. The first ist that verbs that end in -ieren, like fotografieren, diskutieren, studieren, etc., do NOT get a ge- prefix. (These verbs can be easily recognized as English-French cognates, and they all end in -ieren, so it’s a pretty easy group to remember.)

The other exception is for inseparable prefixes, like ver-, be- and miss-. When a verb has an inseparable prefix, it does NOT get a ge- prefix for the participle form.

What happens with separable-prefix verbs? As you might expect, the prefix gets ‘stuck’ back on to the participle at the end, but the ge- prefix ends up in the middle of the word:

Now that you can form the participle form of the verb, we need to learn the complete syntax for a past tense sentence. To form a complete German past tense sentence, you need to add a helping verb, either ‘haben’ or ‘sein’. Let’s look at the verbs that take ‘haben’:

As you can see, the helping verb (haben in these sentences) is conjugated to match the subject, while the participle (ge-stem-t) remains constant. Also note that the participle occurs at the very end of the sentence, while the conjugated helping verb is in the normal verb position (second element for statements, first for questions).

Let’s try a few simple sentences for practice. These are all weak (‘regular’) verbs.

Now we need to learn about the other type of verb, the strong verb. These verbs are harder, because they often change their stem vowel in unpredictable ways, so they need to be memorized. Still, they do build their participle form in a regular fashion: a ge- prefix is added, and an -en (NOT -t) suffix. The stem vowel will often change, but not always. See the separate chart (Verb Classes) for details on stem vowel changes.

There are a handful of strong verbs that don’t just change their vowel, but the whole stem. These irregular verbs just need to be memorized, but fortunately they’re the most common verbs (go, come, be, do), so you’ll see them a lot and get familiar with them very quickly.

The same rules for inseparable prefixes (no ge- added to participle) and separable prefixes (added back on before the ge-) hold true for all verbs, strong, mixed and weak.

In addition to the strong verbs, there is a very small handful (about six) of verbs that are called ‘mixed’ verbs, because they act like a mix between strong and weak verbs. They take a ge-+-t form like weak verbs, but their stem vowels change. Again, these verbs just need to be memorized.