190. The (Present) Perfect Tense
The PERFECT TENSE is extremely important in everyday language. This tense is used in German to express actions that have taken place in the past. In writing, the preferred past tense is probably the Imperfect Tense but in conversations, the Perfect Tense is the language of choice.
The formation of the Perfect involves the use of the Present Tense of the verb 'haben', i.e…..
ich habe, du hast, er, sie, es hat, wir haben, ihr habt, Sie / sie haben
The 2nd part to the tense's formation is with the Past Participle. For a Regular Verb this is formed by putting 'ge' + stem of the verb + 't' ending ..
e.g. ge spiel t = gespielt; ge mach t = gemacht; ge hör t = gehört
The Past Participles of MOST Regular Verbs are formed this way. Exceptions include verbs ending in 'ten' and 'den' - they have 'et' at the end ... gearbeitet, gewartet, gebetet, gebadet, gemeldet.
Other exceptions involve verbs starting with the prefixes below - they have NO 'ge'
be emp ent ge ver zer er or ending in ieren e.g. bestellt; entschuldigt; verbessert; erlaubt; restauriert etc.
So much for the formation ..... the concept for English speakers is interesting now ...
Where we say "I bought a book yesterday" OR "we played cards last night", here we use the simple past tense. In German this is translated by:
"ich habe gestern ein Buch gekauft." & "wir haben gestern Abend Karten gespielt."
In conversation we do sometimes use the Perfect Tense in English ( have ... done etc) and in German the Perfect Tense is used as we saw above ...
"Have you heard this song?" = "Hast du dieses Lied gehört?"
Beispiele
Andreas hat nie diese CD gehört.
Uli und Anja haben alles sauber gemacht.
Ich habe den Vorleger neben das Feuer gelegt.
Sacha, hast du deine Verben für die Klassenarbeit gelernt?
Thomas, Erika, ich hoffe, ihr habt euren Eltern nichts davon gesagt?
Wir haben unsere Schwestern gefragt, aber sie wissen nicht, was passiert.
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