Unlike the Perfekt tense in German, which is mostly used in spoken German and for recent events, the Präteritum (in English, "the simple past") is predominantly a written tense denoting events that date further back in the past. I will explain how to form and use the latter in this post.
Before we examine how the Präteritum tense is formed, let's consider some examples that illustrate when we would use the Perfekt tense and when we would use the Präteritum.
Perfekt
Ich habe gestern meinen Deutschkurs besucht.
Letzten Monat habe ich meine neue Stelle begonnen.
Ich studierte in Aachen, London und Oxford.
Präteritum
Mozart besuchte keine Schule. Sein Vater unterrichtete ihn.
Mozart zog 1781 nach Wien um.
Big Ben wurde 1859 fertig gestellt (this is the passive voice in German)
As a rule of thumb, use the Perfekt tense in conversations and in writing if the events you're discussing happened minutes, hours, days, weeks or months ago, and you're addressing someone informally, such as in an email. For anything dating further back in the past and when you address someone formally, use the Präteritum tense, including years, decades, centuries, etc. Unfortunately, German native speakers are not always careful when drawing these distinctions. Indeed, they sometimes even mix the two tenses indiscriminately.
Let's now look at how the Präteritum tense is formed, distinguishing between regular and irregular verbs.
Regular verbs
Regular verbs keep their stem, as they always do, and add a +te as a sign of this tense.
e.g. spielen
ich spielte
du spieltest
er/sie/es spielte
wir spielten
ihr spieltet
sie/Sie spielten
Ich spielte Tennis, als ich jünger war.
NB. If the verb's stem already ends on d or t, we add an "e" before the ending.
e.g. arbeiten
ich arbeitete
du arbeitetest
er/sie/es arbeitete
wir arbeiteten
ihr arbeitetet
sie/Sie arbeiteten
Er arbeitete früher in Köln.
When you pronounce the latter, you understand why this tense is used mostly in writing.
Irregular verbs
One reason why this tense is difficult for students is because there are many irregular verbs and they lose the +te. However, the two patterns that we already discussed with regard to the Perfekt tense also apply here.
ei - ie
schreiben becomes schrieb
bleiben becomes blieb
ich schrieb
du schriebst
er/sie/es schrieb
wir schrieben
ihr schriebt
sie/Sie schrieben.
Ich schrieb meiner Mutter einen langen Brief.
ie - o
fliegen- flog
anziehen- zog an
Wir zogen uns an, weil wir zur Schule gehen mussten.
Other examples of common verbs in their Präteritum form:
fahren - fuhr
beginnen - begann
gehen - ging
verlieren - verlor
einladen - lud ein
umziehen - zog um
trinken - trank
bekommen - bekam
geben - gab
anrufen - rief an
kommen - kam
ankommen - kam an
NB. As you know from our post on separable verbs in German, they do split here as they are the only verb in a main clause.
Sie kam immer zu spät zum Unterricht an.
Er fuhr als Kind mit dem Bus zur Schule.
Wir luden unsere Freunde zum Essen ein.
How do you figure out if a verb is regular or irregular?
There is no strictly logical rule, but there are two rules of thumb. One is to check the conjugation of the verb in the present tense. If there is a stem change in the singular, it is not only an irregular verb in the present tense but often also irregular in the past.
e.g. “fahren” conjugates er/sie/es fährt in the third person singular and is therefore irregular. And so is the past: gefahren is the past participle (in the Perfekt tense)- fuhr its Präteritum form.
However, there are exceptions, such as the verb “gehen”, which is regular in the present tense but irregular in the past. So my second rule of thumb is to consider the English language. If there is a stem change in English from present to past, it is a strong indication that the verb may be irregular in German as well.
e.g. to go in the present becomes went in the past, so gehen becomes gegangen in the Perfekt and ging in the Präteritum.
Again, there are exceptions, such as
buy- bought - kaufen- gekauft- kaufte
So when both rules of thumb let you down, you have to memorise whether or not the verb is irregular.
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