205. The Imperfect Tense

205. The Imperfect Tense   

Just as we saw recently that the Perfect Tense was used in conversation to express ideas in the past, this time we will have a look at the past tense in writing. This will involve the Imperfect Tense or Simple Past Tense which is the tense we prefer in English in conversation. In German, this is the tense of choice in all the literary media - newspaper articles, novels, fairy stories, reports.

Formation of Regular Verbs -  includes a 't' sound:  ich  höre -  ich hörte  (English also uses the 't' sound in the the past - jump - jumped)  The endings are:
  

ich hörte,  

du hörtest,  

                                                   er, sie, es hörte*,  (Notice no 't' ending as in Present)

wir hörten, 

 ihr hörtet, 

Sie / sie hörten

Irregular Verbs :  Like English there is frequently a vowel change and sadly they must be learned. You will always find a list of these verbs at the back of a good text book. The endings are also different from above and are formed just like Modal verbs in the Present Tense  ….

                  

                     ich schwimme    -    ich schwamm (similar in English - swim - swam)

du schwammst

er, sie, es schwamm

wir schwammen

ihr schwammt

Sie/sie schwammen

Other examples are:

Regular:  Die Frauen kauften Schmuck.  Klaus wohnte sieben Monate in Bremen.

Irregular: Anja kam sofort nach Hause.  Heinz traf seine Frau im Stadtzentrum.

*** One last note here about the Past Tense ... In conversation,  'sein'  and 'haben' in particular are often used in the Simple Past Tense form.  "Tom, hast du gehört? Klaus war heute krank, denn er hatte Kopfschmerzen."

Notice, however that the meanings in English of the Simple Past tense are several:  

er kam  =   he came,  did come,  was coming,  used to come

sie kaufte  =  she bought,  did buy, was buying,  used to buy

We need to set up a list of common verbs that work like this in the near future.

The Hop on Hop off bus city tours - an excellent way to see city sights!