Simple Past

The simple past tense, or Präteritum, is mostly used in news and formal written texts. In spoken language, we use it for the verbs sein, haben, werden, and the modal verbs.

Simple Past: Usage

Rule 1: We use the simple past tense to:

- express a completed action in the past

- talk about a fact or condition in the past

Simple Past of Regular Verbs

Rule 2: The simple past of weak or regular verbs is formed as follows, according to the matching person:

verb stem + -te, -test, -te, -ten, -tet, -ten

Simple Past of Strong Verbs

Rule 3: Strong verbs change the vowel and use the endings as follows. Please note that no ending is added for the 1st and 3rd person singular.

changed verb stem + - , -st, - , -en, -t, -en

Here's an example with the verb gehen (to go):

Stems of the verbs in simple past can change unpredictably - you can only memorize them.

Simple Past of Modal Verbs

Rule 4: Verbs having an umlaut in their infinitive form will drop the umlaut in the simple past, and then we add the regular simple past endings to them. For modal verbs without the umlaut, we simply add the endings.

Here's an example with the verbs dürfen (may) and sollen (should):

For example: