Grammar Flashcards
Here we’ll learn to use the “Perfekt” tense to speak about the recent past.
There are two ways of forming this tense. In this lesson we’ll focus on the Perfekt with “haben”.
(What did you do yesterday?)
(I did sport.)
Was hast du gestern gemacht?
Ich habe Sport gemacht.
ich habe
du hast
er/sie /es hat
wir haben
ihr habt
sie/Sie haben
non
What did you all do yesterday? – We did sport.
Was habt ihr gestern gemacht? – Wir haben Sport gemacht.
The position of “haben”
The “haben” part is in position 1 of a sentence when it’s a yes/no question, and in position 2 the two other sentence types.
Position1. (Did you do any sport yesterday?)
Position 2: (I only made food yesterday.)
(What did you do yesterday?)
Position 1: Hast du gestern Sport gemacht?
Position 2: Ich habe gestern nur Essen gemacht.
Position 2: Was hast du gestern gemacht?
Perfekt - Part 2
Part 2 is a “Partizip”.
The Partizip always comes last in any sentence.
Each verb has its own Partizip that never changes.
“Machen” (to make/to do) has the Partizip “gemacht”:
non
I studied vocabulary yesterday.
Ich habe gestern Vokabeln gelernt.
I worked a lot during lockdown.
Ich habe im Lockdown viel gearbeitet.
The Partizip of “arbeiten” is “gearbeitet”.
It has an extra “e” for pronunciation reasons.
The same goes for other verbs that end in -ten or -den:
non
“Letzt-“ (last) and “dies-“ (this) act like acusative articles.
masculine
der ➡️ den
letzten/diesen Monat
non
In German sentences the verb usually comes 2nd.
It can help to remember this gesture : ✌️ (it means the Verb comes 2nd).
1️⃣ Diesen Monat (time)
2️⃣ bin (verb ✌️)
3️⃣ ich (subject)
4️⃣ faul (rest of sentence).
The same rules apply in a Perfekt sentence.
We just add the Partizip at the end.
1️⃣ Letzten Monat (time)
2️⃣ habe (verb ✌️)
3️⃣ ich (subject)
4️⃣ viel Sport (rest of sentence)
5️⃣ gemacht (Partizip).
Letzten Monat habe ich viel Sport gemacht. (Last month I did a lot of sport.)
The “sein” part is in position 1 in a yes/no question, and in position 2 in the two other sentence types.
The Partizip is always last.
Bist du nach Italien gefahren?
(Did you drive to Italy?)
Ich bin nach Italien gefahren.
(I drove to Italy.)
Wann bist du nach Italien gefahren?
(When did you drive to Italy?)
Here’s a tip!
Attention! The word “E-Mail” has two capital letters!
Since “E” stands for a noun, you write it with a capital initial letter. “Mail” is also a noun that is written with a capital letter. There is a hyphen between them.
The same happens with:
U-Bahn
T-Shirt
non
Accusative or dative?
To decide whether to use the accusative or the dative case, we have to understand the meaning of the sentence: is it about movement towards a destination or about an action that happens in a specific location?
Movement towards something: accusative case
Ich gehe in den Park.
Specific location: dative case
Ich bin in dem Park.
Imagine you’re at a restaurant with your friends. After the meal you want to say that you thought the starter was better than the main and that the dessert blew your mind. Have a look at the example below to see how we can say this, paying attention to the words in bold.
(The main was tasty, the starter was tastier, but the dessert was the tastiest.)
Der Hauptgang war lecker, die Vorspeise war leckerer, aber am leckersten war das Dessert!
