14th June, 2011

The present perfect in German

posted 11 months ago

The present perfect (das Perfekt) is the tense that you will hear a lot - especially in conversations - let’s call it “the conversational past. In English, you use the Present Perfect to express past events that have present implications. For those that don’t you use the Simple Past. Germans don’t draw a clear line between those two sometimes. So we should learn about it:

First of all, we need to know what “tools” we need to form the present perfect in German:

1. AN AUXILIARY VERB; conjugated in the present tense:

-> haben: For most of the verbs

ich habe; du hast; er/sie/es hat; wir haben; ihr habt; sie haben

-> sein: For the verbs that express some sort of movement

ich bin; du bist; er/sie/es ist; wir sind; ihr seid; sie sind

2. THE PAST PARTICIPLE

Examples: Ich habe eingekauft. Ich bin ins Kino gegangen.

Let’s learn more about the usage next time!

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