The Perfect Tense with haben
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