Last time, we learned how to form the present perfect in German and we also had a little blackboard exercise to practise.

Today I’d like to tell you more about the usage:

Germans use the present perfect mostly in conversations. Very often, they express all kinds of things that happened in the past using this tense - even though technically (and in written language) you would have to use the simple past. This can be confusing to English speakers and so it’s important to know about it.

Compare:

Ich bin gestern ins Kino gegangen = I went to the movies yesterday.

Ich habe letztes Jahr meinen Brieffreund besucht. = I vistited my penpal last year.

… and form the PRESENT PERFECT of the following verbs:

Example: essen (they) = sie haben gegessen

1. bleiben (I)

2. lachen (you, singular)

3. trinken (she)

4. einkaufen (you, plural)

5. gehen (we)

6. einschlafen (I)

7. schreiben (they)

8. fahren (you, singular)

…?

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!