German Past Tense 3 - "The Written Past" - 10-18-2016 by German-Is-Easy - German Is Easy!
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German Past Tense 3 - "The Written Past" - 10-18-2016 by German-is-easy - German is easy! - https://yourdailygerman.com German Past Tense 3 - "The Written Past" by German-is-easy - Tuesday, October 18, 2016 https://yourdailygerman.com/german-past-preterite-weak-strong-verbs-explained/ Hello everyone, and welcome to another part of the best German language online course ever. Today (after about 4 god damn years of waiting, for the long-time readers), it is time for a new episode of the epic HBO series called "German Past Tense". If you haven't watched the first 29 episodes you can find them here: German Past Tense - 1 - "An overview" German Past Tense - 2 - "The spoken past" German Past Tense - 3 - "Maria's secret" German Past Tense - 4 - "4th base" German Past Tense - 5 - "Snuggled" Yeah... okay, I'm being silly. Of course, it's only two episodes so far. Part 1 was an overview about German Past tense and what we'll have to learn, part 2 was all about the spoken past and today, in part 3, it is time for a look at: the written past In grammar jargon, this tense is known under the name preterit. But preterit is not intuitive at all and it sounds a bit scary, so we call it written past. Why written past? Because it's one of THE main features of written accounts of stuff, while spoken past is what people use in daily life. Like... if Harry Potter were to tell Ron in German what he's been up to all day on sick leave (sleeping, eating pizza, watching a movie, casting spells), he'd use spoken past. When J.K. Rowling will narrate the same stuff in "Harry Potter 45 - Harry Potter and the Cursed Lumbago", she'll use the written past. When you read a novel in German, you'll see written past all over the place. Now, that would be a great system - if German were consistent about it. But it isn't. German is consistent about pretty much no rule. There's a group of verbs for which the written past is also idiomatic in spoken language. For some, you can use both forms, for others the written past is the better choice, and then there are the ones you'll REALLY love: The ones where the spoken past and the written past are both used, and mean two different things. But before we talk about that, we'll learn how to build the forms. And for that, we'll begin with a look at good ol' English... Past in English 1 / 9 German Past Tense 3 - "The Written Past" - 10-18-2016 by German-is-easy - German is easy! - https://yourdailygerman.com When it comes to past tense, we can divide English verbs into two groups. And no, I don't mean regular and irregular as linguistics does it. Linguistics - shminguistics, who gives a ship. We're here for learnuistics. So, the first group uses a straight forward simple marker for the past: the ending "-ed". cook - cooked dance - danced learn - learned hyperventilate - hyperventilated ... We could make an endless list here. And an even endlesser list once we take a closer look at a whole bunch of other verbs, that are filed under "irregular" in English: say - said ("sayed") hear - heard ("heared") feel - felt ("feeled") leave - left ("leaved") sleep - slept ("sleeped") and even these: make - made ("maked") bend - bent ("bended") ... Yes, they're irregular in so far as there's no "-ed". But there was. These forms got slurred in speech way back in the day, and this was then captured in writing. At the heart however is the standard "-ed" past marker. Now, this group that uses the "-ed"-maker including the verbs where the marker has been slurred is huuuuge. I'd say it makes up 80% of all verbs that the English language has to offer. That leaves about... uh... hold on... calculator... uh 20 percent of verbs for the other group. And that group would REALLY deserve the name iRRregular. They all have in common the same genius idea: screw endings, let's change the stem. Which would be okay if the change was consistent. But it isn't. bring - brought, sing - sang, do - did, go - went** (**went is a mega exception, by the way because it comes from the verb "to wind". Brits used the past form of one verb for the past of another.) There are some patterns but let's be honest ... those patterns might be visible for a linguist. But for the average learner, it's just random. Anyway, so we have these two paradigms of marking the past: adding an "-ed" or changing the stem in some way. Now you're all like "Fine, but what does this have to do with German?" Well, these two groups of verbs are also a thing of the Germanic languages in general. And guess which 2 / 9 German Past Tense 3 - "The Written Past" - 10-18-2016 by German-is-easy - German is easy! - https://yourdailygerman.com other language is Germanic besides English. German! Big shock, I know. In German, we also have these two groups of verbs and if you open a textbook or sit in a course, sooner or later you'll hear the official names of the groups: weak verbs and strong verbs. Like... the weak ones are called weak because they do what they're told. They're obedient suckers that live by the book's boring "-ed" rule, while the strong verbs do what they freaking want and get crazy tattoos all over their stem. Rock and Roll, mofos. Yeah, strong verbs use strong language, too. German has the same two groups of verbs and the way that the past forms are built are really similar. But there are differences too. Let's start with the so-called weak ones, the ones that get the "-ed" ending. regular written past In German, of course we have to first get the stem, so we have to remove the ending of the dictionary form. In the dictionary it says kochen (to cook) but the stem is only koch- . That's what we add our ending to, which in German is not "-ed" but a simple "t". I mean, German sounds a bit harsh and the "e" is silent anyway, right? So "t" makes a lot of sense. But we're not done yet. You might have already noticed that German is kind of a sucker for endings (if you haven't yet ... well, get ready for an unpleasant surprise) and because it likes endings and pointless extra syllables so much, the "t" is followed by an "e". cooked kochte -[___] Tadaaaah... that's the past stem and even though it has just as many letters, the German version is two syllables long. uuuh-te - [___] Yeah, I know I sound silly... but that's the rhythm pattern and it's already enough to sound like past tense. Now some of you are probably like "Emanuel... EMANUEL. What's with the brackets. They're just one of your unfunny jokes, right? RIGHT?" Uhm... no. The brackets [___] are there because to finish off the past form, we need to add an ending. "Whaaaat? But we already added the ending." Well, yes. But we only added the ending for past tense. Now we need to add the ending for the person. Come on guys, don't look at me like that. I told you German loves endings. Seriously though, the endings are really simple and they're almost the more or less the same as the ones we need for the modal verbs in present tense. 3 / 9 German Past Tense 3 - "The Written Past" - 10-18-2016 by German-is-easy - German is easy! - https://yourdailygerman.com ____ kochen können (present tense) ich kochte - * kann - * du kochte - st kann- st er/sie/es kochte - * kann - * wir/sie kochte - n könn - en ihr kochte - t könn - t The only difference is the e for the wir and sie form but hey, if we were to put it there, we'd wind up with "kochteen", so it's kind of a "common sense"-difference. Of course, you can study those endings if you want, but you could also just remember to add st for the du- form and nothing for ich and er/sie/es. Now, let's look at some examples and see the rule in real life. Thomas hört den Vogel. (Thomas hears the bird.) Thomas hörte den Vogel. (Thomas heard the bird.) Ich analysiere das Problem. (I analyze the problem) Ich analysierte das Problem. (I analyzed... ) Again, pay attention to the difference in rhythm between the German version and the English version. One syllable vs. two syllables. Oh and also note that the structure of the present and the past sentences are exactly. So we don't have to do any crazy verb-to-the-end-voodoo like for the spoken past. More examples. Mein Opa erzählte mir eine Geschichte. My grandpa told me a story. Wir warten auf den Bus. (We are waiting for the bus) Wir warteten auf den Bus. Whoops... what was that? Warteten? That doesn't only sound funny, it also doesn't fit with our rule. We learned that the past form is stem + te + person ending; in our case wart + te + n ... wartten But now, the past marker is not audible anymore. That's why there's an extra "e" between the "t" of the 4 / 9 German Past Tense 3 - "The Written Past" - 10-18-2016 by German-is-easy - German is easy! - https://yourdailygerman.com verb itself and the "te" wart- e - te - n stem - filler - past marker - person ending This filler -e- is used for all verbs where the stem ends in "t" or "d" and it's really only there so you can actually hear that the form is past.