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
***
So, let’s jump right in.
Viel Spaß :)
Past Tense Work Out
Put the blue verbs into 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.”
***
“Ist ok. Die Leute sind nett, aber der Lehrer geht mir 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 ging mir ein bisschen auf die Nerven/… ist… gegangen.”
***
Whew, half time. Time for a coffee break :)
**
Ich hab gewusste, dass ich nichts wusste.
“Ich bin auf Klo.
“I was on the toilet.”
“Ich war auf Klo.
Maria ist am Dienstag 30 geworden.
***
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.
Hast du meinen Danke Brief bekommen?
Hab’ ich! Danke für den Danke-Brief :)
Is there a context in which “Maria *wollte* wissen, wann Thomas nach Hause *kommt*” could make sense? That could mean something like “Maria wanted to know when Thomas was going to come home.”
I feel like sometimes when English would use some version of the past tense for both, German uses past tense then present tense.
Or maybe “Ich hatte Angst, dass du mich nicht liebst,” which could mean “I was afraid you didn’t love me.”
Yeah, that’s totally an option. Here’s the context:
– Thomas isn’t home yet but we know he will be at some point
– Maria called some time ago asking “What time will Thomas come home.”
So the difference to the one in the exercise is essentially that there, Thomas is home at the moment of utterance.
German and English are different with regards to how to use tenses in sequence and I’ll do a post on that at some point. That’s part of the reason for this exercise. I wanted to get people wondering about this :)
How would you express the context I described in English, by the way?
You could definitely say, “Maria wanted to know when Thomas will come/is coming/going to come home.” (By the way, I’d say “is coming” works best for this kind of situation – unless Maria isn’t that certain Thomas IS going to come home.)
Okay, cool. Another gap in my English closed :)
Actually I’m not sure I agree with berlingrabers. I think in English English (by which I mean I’m writing from the UK), we would say, ‘Maria wanted to know when Thomas was going to come home.’ It seems to me that this sequence of tenses thing is odd in English. Other European languages all seem to have the first verb in the past tense, but the thing that that verb governs remains in the tense it would have been had it all been in the present. Peter said he is coming home. Sounds extremely odd in English, but put it in French or Russian (or presumably German) and that’s what you’d expect.
That’s interesting!! I always though German was the odd man out with its using the present for the second half of these kinds of sentences.
Bitte verzeihen Die much, went mine Wortordnung felt aber
Kann man zB. sagen
Tim war sauer, weil er nicht Computer hat spielen dürfen
Kann man sowas überhaupt sagen(Ich glaube schon…?). Wenn ja, hört man’s oft? Eine ehemalige Freundin hat beide (mündlich) gesagt. Mir fällt ‘spielen dürfen’ leichter.
Du kannst das auch sagen, aber es ist auf jeden Fall seltener und klingt ein bisschen gestelzt (stilted). Machst du das auch bei “können” und “wollen”?
wenn meine Wortornung –feHlt— (ahh, die Freuden von Autocorrect)
Ja, Autokorrektur macht mich auch immer wahnsinnig. Noch eine kleine Korrektur: “verzeihen Sie mir”. Oder noch besser “verzeih mir” (du kannst “du” zu mir sagen)
Vielen Dank, Emanuel.
Auch:
1. Mitt;erweile hat Autokorrektur (mindestens) vielen Auseinandersetzungen verursachen haben.
2.Ich bin mir nie sicher gewesen, ob ich “Du” oder “Sie” wahrend meinen ersten Gesprächen mit anderen Deutschsprachigen sagen sollte, Mann musste mir korregieren, und
freundlich erklären)
Why is it ‘sah aus wie kotze’ and not ‘sah wie kotze aus’? Danke sehr
Both are correct. “sah aus wie Kotze” is a little more fashionable at the moment I guess. It does seem to clash with the “prefix goes to the end”-rule you learn in the beginning in almost every course but there’s actually a logical explanation why the “wie”-part can come after that doesn’t destroy the rule. Check out my post on comparisons for more about that.
https://yourdailygerman.com/comparisons-german/
It’s in the section about sentence structure.
Vielen Dank Emanuel! Deine Sätze machen mehr Spaß als die Sätze, die ich in meinem Deutschbuch habe. Es war sehr gute Idee, die Übungen mit dem Audio machen, deine Webseite die Seele hat :)
Danke für das tolle Feedback :)
When to use which past tense has been bothering me for months, and in one post you explained it so well that I got all of them right (except number nine)! Thanks for your magical explanation skills :)
Wow, that’s great :)! And about number 9… I guess you were thinking “abstract use” and chose “Wie kamst du auf die Idee.” That is okay as well and especially in the North people do say that. The thing is that the “du”-form in general tends to use even more spoken past than “ich” or “er”, especially in questions. I think it’s mainly because it’s a bit cumbersome to say
– Du hast gestern super ausgesehen.
– Du sahst gestern super aus.
“sahst” just feels strange and challenging for the tongue, so here spoken past would be more idiomatic.
I didn’t mention that in the article and I was kind of waiting for that question here :)
Das macht Sinn. Ich finde immer die “du” Endung ein bisschen komisch zu betonen (selbst in Präsens). Vielen dank für die zusätzliche Erklärung!
First of all, thank you, Emanuel, for this wonderful page! On the topic of concrete versus abstract usage in the context of spoken versus written past, I was wondering if there is something like degrees of abstraction that would be relevant? I chose “Wie bist du auf diese Idee gekommen” because it felt more intuitive to me, but, based on your rule, I did second guess myself. To me, “auf eine Idee kommen” is still quite close to concrete usage, an expression like “jemandem einfallen,” however, somewhat less so. Is it more idiomatic to say “Es ist mir plötzlich eingefallen, dass Maria nicht zu Hause war,” correct? Is it also acceptable to say “Es fiel mir plötzlich ein, dass . . .”? (And please don’t tell me that “war” in the Nebensatz HAS to be “ist” — that just feels so wrong to me as an English speaker!)
The audios are great. My impression is that in normal spoken German, endings tend to become so muffled as to be almost inaudible. Specifically, in some of your example sentences, there is hardly any audible difference at all between “ein” and “einen” (maybe a slightly longer pause on the “n” in the second case, but definitely not a full-fledged second syllable). Likewise, “einem” sounds more like a one-syllable “eim.” The final “en” on infinitives and irregular past particles (“gekommen”) also seems to be reduced to a mere echo (e.g., “gekommn” — at just two syllables for all intents and purposes).
So, two questions: (1) Are there speakers who enunciate these endings more clearly in daily speech? and (2) If not, then would you agree that there may be a process underway that will eventually lead to the leveling of these endings, producing something like “Ich hab ein Mann gesehn, als ich gekomm bin”? The spoken form, to me, already sounds worringly close to this. I say “worringly” because I LOVE the German language, and its wonderful system of case inflections, retention of “en” in the infinitive, and the like are some of its most characteristic features. Practically all the other Germanic languages have more or less lost these features, but German has retained them. That’s what has always made the language stand out for me and one of the main reasons I really love and admire it so much. I would be very sad to see it lose these wonderful features to go the way of Dutch, English, etc. (I’m still mourning the — very recent — loss of the dative “e,” which I find so elegant. German is very consonant heavy, and having extra vowels in there like the dative “e” helps break up consonant clusters and, in doing so, also makes for a very nice rhythm. Anyway . . .)
Sorry, that should have been: Is it more idiomatic to say “Es ist mir plötzlich eingefallen, dass Maria nicht zu Hause war” OR “Es fiel mir plötzlich ein, dass . . .”?
So, about levels of abstraction… that’s where things start to become totally subjective.
To you “auf eine Idee kommen” is still somewhat concrete but to other it is already completely abstract and unreal.
Both of your example sound idiomatic, and “fiel mir ein” sounds a bit novelish to me, but “fallen” is not really in the list of verbs where it matters, anyway.
This abstract vs. concrete stuff is a trend, nothing more. getting all of them right all the time is a matter of Sprachgefühl (feeling for the language) and this trend just helps a bit with that, but there’s no guarantee.
Oh and as for the “war” vs “ist”… that depends on what you want to say. If she wasn’t in the room the moment you realized, then it is “ist”. If she had not been in the room at some point before, then it’s “war”.
German is weird like that, I know :).
Now… about pronunciation:
I’m from Berlin and I think we’re particularly lazy with these endings but they do get muffled all over Germany. In fact, skipping the “e” in first person singular is already and accepted alternative spelling and I don’t have to indicate the omission with the inverted comma.
– Ich hab
– Ich hab’
I used to write (and do write on the blog) the second version but I think the first one is accepted as well.
The article endings… that’s a really interesting question. Because even it’s barely audible, I do “feel” them when I hear or say them. Yes, “einem” sounds like “eim” but it feels like there are two syllables there.
The thing why I don’t think German will lose them anytime soon is that “eine” is defined by the “e” and no one ever skips that.
We might skip the “ei” and just say “ne” or “nem” but we never say “ein Frau”.
So the rhythm of a two syllable article is rock solid and hence I see no reason why “-en, -em” should vanish, even though they are muffled beyond recognition. People feel them there :).
Lieber Emanuel,
Dankeschön für deine ausführliche Antwort auf meine vielen Fragen. Sehr geschätzt.
Kleine Korrektur:
Ich weiß, dass du mit “sehr geschätzt” “much appreciated” meinst, aber das ist nicht wirklich idiomatisch in Deutsch.
Wenn, dann würde man sagen “Ich schätze das sehr” aber das klingt ein bisschen formal :)
Hallo Emanuel,
Dankeschön für deinen sehr hilfreichen Blog! Ich lese es seit Weihnachten und lerne ich Deutsch seit sechs Monaten. Mein Sprachgefühl ist viel besser, seit ich dieses Site gefinden habe…zumindest glaube ich. Ich versuche jeden Tag mindestens einen Artikel zu lesen, und lese ich oft mehr. Ich mag deinen Humor und deinen Schreibstil. Ich freue mich darauf, mehr Artikel von dir zu lesen!
I’ve just got a free membership :) Danke schön all Donators! <3
Danke schön für diese wunderbare Site. Ich mag Dein Stil und Humor. Ich habe Die Nr. 41 nicht verstanden, Was hast Du gesagt am Ende ‘gegangen….’ Sollte es nicht ‘sind’ sein?
I hear: “Das war das erste Mal, dass wir zusammen was trinken gegangen sind.” Which is correct. Maybe the “sind” is a bit quiter than the rest, but that is the problem if you try to say a sentence with a dozen words in one breath. I don’t know whether that helps or is worse but maybe you could try with a less mechanical aproach, Emanuel. You’ve done it before and spoke the sentences like you were actually in a normal everyday situation with intonation, pauses and gusto. That is missing here. I would have gone with an astonished “wow” for this sentence. I mean, it must have been really exhausting to record all those sentences. It might even have been more fun for you, if you had spoken them like a story line, a bit acting, training of the voice cords, mimimimie! This is not a government founded teaching organisation that has to follow certain rules and standards. Your teaching always had the underlying idea of having fun while learning. And in that sense, I think your posts are best, if one can feel how much fun you had when you made them. Also viel Spaß an der Freude! I am looking forward to your next article. :)
Sorry, I logged in with my tablet, doesn’t seem to work. Probably an error on my part.
Really interesting feedback about the reading!! I actually thought about (a bit) and I really wasn’t sure as to how much I should “act out” the examples solutions. It’s boring to hear 50 sentences with a neutral intonation, no doubt, but then again, this exercise is also for beginners who hear the audio several times in a row and who might not be ready for the “real” stuff. That’s why I spoke a little tiny bit slower than I usually do (at least in the first examples). If I go all out on acting, my thought would be that it ends up going on people’s nerves.
You’re right, I do enjoy it more when I act it out, so I would really be curious to read some more thoughts on this. So come people reading the comments…. what do you think? More acting? Or do you think a neutral reading is more helpful for your level?
As for the example in question… yes, it is a bit quiet but I don’t think it’s unnatural. People do talk like that and I feel like it’s normal in this sentence if the last bit has less energy than the beginning.
I do have to do some noise cancelling on the recordings, which chips away at the actual voice. I thought about using a compressor before but I ended up not doing it because I felt like I want to keep the natural dynamic of a voice. Anyway, yeah… if anyone reads this: what’s your opinion? More acting?
I’m gonna do more work outs in this format so I’m really curious.
Ja stimmt, aber ich sage doch auch “sind”, oder? Ist es vielleicht zu leise?
Ja, ‘sind’ war leise…
hab grad mein gratis Studentemitgliedschäft bekommen … vielen Dank an alle die Spender :)
I have a question. I always thought that werden was the future tense, but I looked it up and seen that it also has other meanings. Whenever I see werden, I think of the English “will,” but this seems to not always be the case. Can you clarify this for me or direct me to a lesson that you have already done on this? Vielen Dank.
“Werden” gets a two-parter. :)
Part 1 – https://yourdailygerman.com/2013/09/20/meaning-werden/
Part 2 – https://yourdailygerman.com/2013/09/24/werden-future-passive-german/
The very quick summary: “werden” by itself (as a main verb) means “become” or sometimes “turn out/end up.” As a helping verb, it’s used for the future like you were already aware, but it’s also used to form the passive voice where English uses “be.” Its “will,” “be,” and “become” meanings are all pretty common, so you really need to be ready to try all of them onto a sentence with “werden” until you get familiar with the ways it’s used.
Vielen Dank
Got you covered :)
https://yourdailygerman.com/meaning-werden/
(It’s two parts)
Vielen Dank
Do you have the meanings of the past forms for the modals? For example, dürfen. I understand the present, “to be allowed to do something,” but I’m not sure how this translates to the past? Vielen Dank.
durfte: was allowed to
konnte: could, was able to
wollte: wanted
musste: had to
mochte: liked (also “might” but that’s SUPER rare)
sollte: should, was supposed to
Hope that helps.
I got “9. Wie kommst du auf diese Idee?” wrong. I figured because an idea is an abstract idea that I would use “kamst” here, because an idea is not physically coming. Could you explain why it is bist/gekommen here?
Yeah, I kind of set you all up for failure there :). Your reasoning is totally correct but for the “du” form, the written past sounds particularly odd. The reason is that people simply don’t hear it a lot. Written past is used in writing most of the time, and there’s very little “du” in a narration in a novel while there’s plenty of “he” and “she” (which is the same form as “I”). So “kamst” (and other du-forms except the modals) is just super rare overall
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=kam%2C(kamst*100)&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=20&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ckam%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2C%28kamst%20%2A%20100%29%3B%2Cc0
I multiplied the result for “kamst” by 100 and it’s still way less than “kam”.
So… even if the verb would use written past for “ich”, for “du” the spoken past might still be the more idiomatic choice. Not a fixed rule or anything… just a trend.
By the way… for “ich” and “sie/er”, both written and spoken past would sound okay for “auf eine Idee kommen”.
Hope that clears it up a bit.
Ich fand sowohl diese Übungen als auch den ursprünglichen Post super nützlich! Vielen, vielen Dank dafür! Ich habe noch zwei kurze Fragen:
1. Verwenden wir jemals das Präteritum mit dem Verb “gefallen”? (Das ist mit Bezug auf Nummer 17).
2. Ich habe die gleiche Frage zum Verb “lassen” (Nummer 23). Eher weiß ich, daß es manchmal benutzt wird, aber ich weiß nicht genau wann. Kannst du ein paar Beispiele geben?
ähm…wenn*
1) Ich glaube ich verwende es nie, aber wenn man weiter nach Norden geht, findet man das bestimmt. Es klingt nicht total komisch.
2)
– Der Türsteher hat mich reingelassen.
– Mein Chef hat mich nicht in Ruhe gelassen.
– Ich habe das Glas fallen lassen.
(ließ would sound high brow, spoken is much more idiomatic)
– Die Tür ließ sich nicht öffnen.
(this is the only instance where written past sounds super natural to me. Spoken would work as well though)
Hope that helps.
Ja, ich verstehe, danke. Es scheint mir, daß ich immer mit diesen zwei Verben Partizip II benutzen kann. Das gefällt mir immer, wenn es einfacher sein mag. :)
I got some right, mostly the ones with verbs that have the abstract and literal meaning. I had a hard time with the big sentences, though. Hopefully, with more studying, I can come to this post and get them correctly.
Really cool exercises, I loved it.
Das PDF-Fassung ist kaputt! Kannst du es reparieren? Bitte bitte ? :)
Done :). Should work now.
“if anyone reads this: what’s your opinion? More acting?”
I don’t know. I loved the practice. But I still had to drag myself through the fifty exercises. I think when you give us so much to practice then neutral is better.
Thanks for the input :). But hey, you don’t have to do all at once. It’s meant more as an exercise collection than one intense sitting.
Why does the past tense of, “12. In der Gebrauchsanweisung stand, dass man das Handy erst mal komplett aufladen muss.” still have a “muss” at the end. But the past tense of 22, “Maria war sehr gestresst, weil sie schnell eine Wohnung finden musste.” ends in “musste”? I can’t think of a reason.
Very good question and well observed!!
The reason is this:
The statement in 12 contains a restating of something that was stated/phrased at some point in the past; here in the form of writing in the manual.
That original statement is in present tense at the moment of utterance (in the manual). For example something like this:
– Der Akku muss blah blah blah
One thing about German is that when you rephrasing/restate something using constructions like “A said, that….. ” you keep the tense in the statement you’re rephrasing the way it was.
Here an example. On January first, Thomas says “I want to become a vegetarian.”
On December 31st Maria tells that story to a friend.
– Thomas hat vor einem Jahr gesagt, dass er Vegetarier werden WILL.
Not “wollte”. Languages have different approaches to this, but German keeps the original tense.
In 22 on the other hand, we have no retold speech, just two things that were facts in the past, hence they’re both in past tense.
Let me know if that helps.
Yes that helps a lot. I need to practice it a few times. But it is the reason I was looking for. Thank you for the quick response.