Reference · module 12
The written past
Everything this module explains, on one page.
war and hatte
Talk about how things were, the way Germans actually say it.
- You already say Ich bin gegangen for the past. But for sein and haben, almost nobody uses that form in speech. They say war and hatte instead.
- ich war, du warst, er war, wir waren, ihr wart, sie waren. Note that ich and er are identical — that happens in every past tense in German.
- hatte follows the same shape: ich hatte, du hattest, er hatte, wir hatten. Ich hatte keine Zeit is what you say, not ich habe keine Zeit gehabt.
The mistake you are about to make
Ich war gegangen.
Ich bin gegangen.
War looks like the all-purpose past, so it wants to carry other verbs too. It only covers "was": going is ich bin gegangen, and war gegangen is a different tense.
konnte, musste, wollte
Say what you could, had to, or wanted to do.
- Modals behave like sein and haben: the short past is the normal one. konnte, musste, wollte, durfte, sollte, mochte.
- Notice what happens to the umlaut: können becomes konnte, müssen becomes musste, mögen becomes mochte. The dots fall off in the past, every time.
- The word order does not change: Ich konnte nicht kommen. The modal takes second place and the other verb still waits at the end.
The mistake you are about to make
Ich könnte nicht kommen.
Ich konnte nicht kommen.
The umlaut is part of how können looks, so the dots come along for the ride. The past drops them: konnte. Könnte exists too and means "could, if" — another sentence entirely.
Which past to use
Choose the past a German would choose in that situation.
- German has two pasts and they do not split by meaning. They split by where you are: the Perfekt is spoken, the Präteritum is written.
- So a story you tell at dinner is Perfekt: Ich habe einen Film gesehen. The same story in a newspaper is Präteritum: Er sah einen Film.
- The exceptions are the words you use constantly: sein, haben and the modals. Those take the written past even in speech, which is why they were worth a lesson each.
The mistake you are about to make
Ich sah gestern einen Film.
Gestern habe ich einen Film gesehen.
The German perfect looks like the English one, which cannot take "yesterday" — so the simple-looking sah gets picked. German has it the other way round: spoken past is the perfect.
Telling what happened
Tell a short story about your day in the past.
- A story needs joining words: zuerst, dann, danach, später, am Ende. They all take first place and push the verb to second.
- Inside a sentence, German puts time before place: Ich bin gestern nach Berlin gefahren. Time, then manner, then place — in that order.
The mistake you are about to make
Ich bin nach Berlin gestern gefahren.
Ich bin gestern nach Berlin gefahren.
English ends with the time — "I went to Berlin yesterday" — so nach Berlin comes out first. German reverses the pair: when before where, every time.