The Perfect Tense with haben
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Learn to talk about past events with haben and the past participle. Practise regular and irregular participles and the sentence bracket in statements and questions.
Explanation
The perfect tense with haben
The German Perfekt is a past tense used especially in conversation and personal messages:
- Heute koche ich zu Hause. → Gestern habe ich zu Hause gekocht.
- Wir sehen den Film. → Wir haben den Film gesehen.
It consists of a present-tense form of haben and a past participle at the end.
| Person | haben |
|---|
| ich | habe |
| du | hast |
| er/sie/es | hat |
| wir | haben |
| ihr | habt |
| sie/Sie | haben |
Forming the participle
Regular verbs usually use ge- + stem + -t: machen → gemacht, lernen → gelernt. After stems ending in -t/-d, -et is common: arbeiten → gearbeitet.
Verbs ending in -ieren do not take ge-: studieren → studiert, reparieren → repariert.
Many irregular participles end in -en and may change their stem: lesen → gelesen, schreiben → geschrieben, trinken → getrunken, finden → gefunden. Learn these forms with the verb.
Inseparable prefixes be-, emp-, ent-, er-, ge-, miss-, ver-, zer- block ge-: besuchen → besucht, verkaufen → verkauft, verstehen → verstanden. With separable verbs, ge appears between prefix and stem: einkaufen → eingekauft, anrufen → angerufen.
Word order
In statements and wh-questions, haben is in position 2 and the participle is at the end:
- Mia hat am Samstag ihre Großeltern besucht.
- Was habt ihr gestern gemacht?
In a yes/no question, haben is in position 1: Hast du schon gegessen?
The auxiliary and participle form a sentence bracket. This lesson covers only verbs that form the perfect with haben. Verbs using sein are treated separately.
Exercises
- Which infinitive belongs to the past participle? Choose the correct form. (11)
- Form a question in the perfect tense and give the indicated short answer. (11)
- Arrange the words into a sentence in the perfect tense. Mind the sentence bracket. (11)
- Read the connected texts and complete them with haben and the past participle. (4)
- Prefix verbs in the perfect tense: turn the cues into a complete sentence. Decide whether ge- goes between the prefix and stem or is omitted entirely. (11)
A2 · German · Grammar