Lesson 44 of 69 · A2, Unit 5: Grammar milestones
The past: the perfect tense
In spoken German, the perfect tense (das Perfekt) is the everyday way to talk about the past. It's built from haben (or sein — next lesson) in second position plus a past participle at the end: Ich habe Pizza gegessen. Wir haben Fußball gespielt.
Regular verbs make the participle with ge- + stem + -t: machen → gemacht, kaufen → gekauft. Irregular verbs use ge- + (often changed) stem + -en: essen → gegessen, schreiben → geschrieben. Learn the irregular ones as you meet them.
By the end you can:
- form the past participle of regular and common irregular verbs
- put haben in second position and the participle at the end
- handle participles of separable and be-/ver- verbs
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