Hello everyone,
you thought we were done with it. You thought we’d left it behind. You thought it was past. But it’s not.
It’s back!!!
With a vengeance. And it’s hell bent on making you suffer…. the German Past Tense.
Uh, I mean practice :).
We did a laughable, puny work-out session two weeks ago, right after we talked about when to use written past in spoken. But the topic is so important for daily conversation we totally have to do a big work out session for this. And now is the perfect time because we’ve forgotten pretty much everything. It’s this method that we developed here called SRS and it’s based on much, much research. Super scienfitic.
So yeah, today we’ll do a HUUUUGE work-out on speaking idiomatic spoken past.
Here’s how it works :
I’ll give you a sentence in present tense and you have to put it into the proper past tense. The solutions are right next to the example in the audio, so you also get to train your listening comprehension. And I’ve decided to NOT put the translations right under the sentences, so you ALSO get to train your reading comprehension and your ability to guess from context.
So the work-out is basically like doing dead-lifts and crunches at the same time while being on a treadmill :).
If you want to refresh your memory, you can jump to the article about the theory right here:
Oh, and here are the most common irregular verbs that use written past in spoken German
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So, let’s jump right in.
Viel Spaß :)
Past Tense Work Out
Put the blue verbsinto the idiomatic past tense (sometimes, two options are possible).
The play button:listen to the solution
The green button: shows the solution
The “?” button: shows the English translation (I used past tense in the English for the most part)
The text field: write down your version if want to compare it to the solution, NOT automatic :)
“Geht so.”
“Was okay.”
“Ging so.”
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“Ist ok. Die Leute sind nett, aber der Lehrer gehtmir ein bisschen auf die Nerven.”
“It was okay. The people were nice but the teacher got on my nerves a bit.”
“War ok. Die Leute waren nett, aber der Lehrer gingmir ein bisschen auf die Nerven/… ist… gegangen.”
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Whew, half time. Time for a coffee break :)
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Ich hab gewusste, dass ich nichts wusste.
“Ich bin auf Klo.
“I was on the toilet.”
“Ich war auf Klo.
Maria istam Dienstag 30 geworden.
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You made it :)
Toll gemacht.
How’d you do? Did you get all of them right? Or just some? Or none? Did you have any problems with the word ordering? Are there examples where you’re confused about the past I chose? And did you enjoy doing this?
Let me know in the comments and we’ll talk about it and make you a past tense master.
I hope you enjoyed this, have a great week and see you next time.