Lesson 02
How to talk about your past — the tense you'll use every single day in Germany.
In spoken German, the past is almost always the Perfekt. If you can't say what you did yesterday, you can't tell a story, answer a colleague, or make small talk. Good news: you already know the shape from Lesson 01 — this just fills it in.
The Perfekt is the bracket you already met: a helper verb in position 2, and the Partizip II waiting at the end.
Ich habe gestern Deutsch gelernt.
The helper is almost always haben — but some verbs take sein. Getting that choice right is the first thing to master.
| Helper | Use it for | Common verbs |
|---|---|---|
| haben | most verbs — anything you do to something | machen · lernen · essen · sehen · lesen · kaufen |
| sein | movement from A to B, or a change of state | gehen · fahren · kommen · fliegen · aufstehen · bleiben · werden · passieren |
If the subject moves or changes, use sein. Otherwise use haben. Ich bin nach Berlin gefahren. · Ich habe Berlin besucht.
Four patterns cover almost everything. Find the verb's type, then apply it.
| Type | Pattern | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Regular | ge- + stem + -t | machen → gemacht · lernen → gelernt |
| Irregular | ge- + (changed) stem + -en | sprechen → gesprochen · lesen → gelesen |
| be- / ver- / er- … | no ge- | besuchen → besucht · verstehen → verstanden |
| Separable | prefix + ge- + stem | aufstehen → aufgestanden · einkaufen → eingekauft |
One more, and it's easy: verbs ending in -ieren take no ge-. studieren → studiert, telefonieren → telefoniert.
Tell the story of yesterday, out loud, in six sentences. Use haben or sein correctly and put the participle at the end.
Say it twice: once slowly, then at normal speed. Then say it again tomorrow from memory — that's the retrieval that makes it stick.