The Perfekt: What Happened
In spoken German, the past is the Perfekt: a helper verb in second position and a participle thrown to the very end of the sentence.
That split is the hard part. The sentence stays open until the last word, which is why German speakers seem to pause before finishing — the meaning genuinely arrives last.
Vocabulary
- ich habe gemacht
- I did / made
- ich habe gegessen
- I ate
- ich habe gesehen
- I saw
- ich habe gesagt
- I said
- ich bin gegangen
- I went (on foot)
- ich bin gefahren
- I went (by vehicle)
- ich bin geblieben
- I stayed
- gestern
- yesterday
- gestern Abend
- last night
- letzte Woche
- last week
- schon
- already
- noch nie
- never (yet)
Example Phrases
Gestern habe ich im Restaurant gegessen.
Yesterday I ate at a restaurant.
Was hast du am Wochenende gemacht?
What did you do at the weekend?
Ich bin ins Kino gegangen.
I went to the cinema.
Sie ist sehr früh gefahren.
She left very early.
Ich habe nichts gesagt.
I didn't say anything.
Grammar note
The participle goes last. Always.
German main clauses put the conjugated verb second and everything else in between, with the participle at the very end: Ich **habe** gestern im Restaurant **gegessen**.
The temptation is to write Ich habe gegessen im Restaurant, copying English order. That's wrong, and it's the error that most marks out a beginner. Build the sentence around the frame: helper … [everything] … participle.
Grammar note
haben or sein?
Most verbs take haben. Verbs take **sein** when they describe movement from A to B (gehen, fahren, fliegen, kommen) or a change of state (aufstehen, einschlafen, sterben, werden). Bleiben (to stay) and sein itself are irregular members of the sein group.
Participles: regular verbs are ge- + stem + -t (gemacht, gesagt); strong verbs are ge- + changed stem + -en (gegessen, gesehen, gegangen) and simply have to be learned.