The German Perfekt: how to talk about the past
haben or sein? Where does the participle go? A practical guide to building the Perfekt tense that Germans actually use in conversation.
In spoken German, the past is mostly the Perfekt, not the Präteritum. If you want to tell someone what you did yesterday, this is the tense you need. It is built from two parts: a helping verb (haben or sein) and a past participle.
The shape of the sentence
The helping verb takes the normal second position; the participle jumps to the very end. Ich habe einen Film gesehen. Wir sind nach Berlin gefahren. Train your ear to expect that final participle — it is what makes the sentence sound German.
haben or sein?
- Use sein with verbs of movement from A to B: gehen, fahren, fliegen, kommen, laufen.
- Use sein with a change of state: aufstehen, einschlafen, sterben, werden.
- Use haben for almost everything else, especially verbs with a direct object: essen, sehen, kaufen, machen.
Building the participle
Regular (weak) verbs follow ge- + stem + -t: machen → gemacht. Irregular (strong) verbs usually take ge- + changed stem + -en: sehen → gesehen, trinken → getrunken. There is no shortcut for the strong ones — learn them as a set, ideally in a small daily batch.
Verbs ending in -ieren (studieren, telefonieren) form the participle WITHOUT ge-: studiert, telefoniert. Same for inseparable-prefix verbs: verstehen → verstanden.
Häufig gestellte Fragen
When should I use Perfekt and when Präteritum?
In everyday speech, use the Perfekt for almost all past events. The Präteritum survives mainly in writing and with a few common verbs like war (sein) and hatte (haben).
How do I know if a verb takes haben or sein?
Movement from one place to another and changes of state take sein; almost everything else takes haben. When in doubt, haben is the safer default for verbs with a direct object.