The Past tense - Imperfekt / Präteritum

‘Präteritum’ refers to the events that happened in the past as the perfect tense but it is used mostly in written language such as stories, novel, newspapers, etc.

Beispiel:

Ich machte die Hausaufgabe (I did the homwork)

Ich fuhr nach Berlin (I travelled to Berlin)

How to conjugate verbs in ‘Präteritum’?

For regular/weak verbs, drop the verb the ending ‘-en’ and add the verb endings of ‘Präteritum’ as follows:

For irregular verbs the vowel changes in the verb stem as follows:

‘haben’ and ‘sein’ are the most commonly used irregular verbs in ‘Präteritum’. They are conjugated as follows:

Übung (exercise):

Ergänzen das Verb in der richtigen Form.
(Complete the verb in the correct form.)

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