Past Tense German – The Imperfect Tense

Here we want to go through how you talk about the German Past Tense. There are a few forms of the Past Tense in German. We were talking about the Perfect Tense in our last blog and in this article we will be looking at the Imperfect Tense.

This German past tense, the Imperfect Tense, is used to talk about situations in the past such as:

A situation which happens in the past which has no link to the Present anymore:

For example:
She bought a red bag which she gave her friend. – Sie kaufte eine rote Tasche, die sie ihrer Freundin schenkte.

A situation which describes how people felt in the past or how things were in the past:

For example:

I was glad when he came home. – Ich war froh als er nach Hause kam.

A situation which used to happen regularly in the past:

For example:

I played the piano every day. – Ich spielte jeden Tag Klavier.

Forming a Past Tense German Sentence in the Imperfect Tense

Forming a past tense German sentence within the Imperfect Tense depends on whether the verb is a weak verb, a strong verb, or a mixed verb.

Forming the Imperfect Tense with weak and mixed verbs:

To form the Imperfect Tense of a weak verb, you need to change the ending and leave the stem as it is in the Present Tense. The Imperfect Tense with mixed verbs is built with the same ending than the weak verbs. But remember, that the stem with mixed verbs will change.

Here are a few examples of how to get a weak verb into the past tense:

spielen – to play – ich spielte

machen – to make – ich machte

reden – to speak – ich redete

Here are a few examples of how to get a mixed verb into the past tense:

kennen – to know – ich kannte

rennen – to run – ich rannte

Some weak verbs will change their spelling when used in the Imperfect Tense. This depends, with what letter the stem of the weak verb is ending.

If it ends with d, t, m or n you need to put an extra “e” before the usual imperfect ending.

For example: ich arbeitete – I worked (I was working)

If the m or n has one of the consonants l, r or h in front of it, the e is not added in the pronoun form du, er, sie, es and ihr.

For example: du lerntest – you learned (you were learning)

Forming the Imperfect Tense with strong verbs:

The main difference between the weak and the strong verbs in the Imperfect Tense is, that the strong verbs will have different endings if used in the Imperfect Tense.

As with mixed verbs, the stem may change when going into the past tense German form.

Examples:

essen – to eat – ich aß
fahren – to drive – ich fuhr
trinken – to trink – ich trank