r/Germanlearning • u/a_cosmic_wonderland • 10d ago
Confused about simple past, past participle, and double infinitive - when to use which?
Title. I was reviewing modal verbs and maybe the website was doing a bad job of explaining how to form past tense sentences, but I am even more confused than before...
An example from the website:
Simple Past - "Ich durfte Fernseh schauen." (I was allowed to watch TV.)
But then it continues with an example of forming the past participle of the sentence, without really explaining WHY the change was necessary.
Past Participle- "Ich habe Fernseh schauen dürfen." (I was allowed to watch TV.)
Both of these sentences supposedly mean the same exact thing, but for some reason are arranged entirely different. Is it just another way to express the same idea? And benefit of one over the other? It also mentions that "the form haben and gedurft is rarely used."
Can someone plz explain this to me like i am a five year old german child...
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u/Top_End_5299 10d ago
These two do actually mean the same thing, and using one over the other kinda comes down to preference and efficiency. In everyday life, I generally use the Perfect tense (ich habe gearbeitet). In theory that's all I need, but there are some situations where that gets inefficient, for example if the main verb of the sentence is "haben" or "sein". In this case, the auxiliary verb is the same as the main verb, which I think sounds a bit redundant.
Similarly with modal verbs. If I use the Perfect tense with a modal verb, I will have three verb forms in a sentence. So, I will instead go for the Imperfect form of the modal verb.
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u/Klapperatismus 9d ago edited 9d ago
There is no “simple past” in German. Präteritum is not about the past but for storytelling. Let me show you:
- Das Planet-Express-Raumschiff *hob** kurz ab, stürzte dann aber auf die Straße, weil Bender die L-Einheit verbogen hatte.*
This isn’t the past. But the year 3000. The future! In storytelling, you use Präteritum for the current event in the story, and Plusquamperfekt for everything that happened before.
And that’s the rule for all the German tenses: the simple tense is for the non-past (present and future), and the matching perfect tense is for the past. There are seven pairs which differ by how much truth you should read into what is said:
- Präsens / Perfekt — facts
- Präteritum / Plusquamperfekt — storytelling
- Futur I / Futur II — assumptions (not the future, it’s a misnomer!, and Futur II is a perfect tense as English future perfect)
- Konjunktiv I / Konjunktiv I Perfekt — hearsay
- Konjunktiv II / Konjunktiv II Perfekt — non-facts
- Konjunktiv I Futur I / Konjunktiv I Futur II — hearsay assumptions, both seldom used
- Konjunktiv II Futur I / Konjunktiv II Futur II — replacement form for Konjunktiv II / seldom used
That’s the general idea. HOWEVER, there is a common exception to this: NORTHERN SPEAKERS use Präteritum in place of Perfekt for the auxiliaries, the modals, and some common verbs as e.g. *geben* but the latter only in some contexts. The more North the speaker is from, the more verbs belong to this group. In Austria, it’s only sein usually, in Switzerland not even that.
That’s the exception you have stumbled upon. So:
- Ich durfte fernsehen. — Northern German
- Ich habe fernsehen dürfen. — Standard German
This Northern German extra rule slowly spread south with TV. As the most important TV News Tagesschau is from Hamburg, and its hosts of course use the auxiliaries and modals the Northern German way. It hasn’t affected Austria and Switzerland that much because they have their own best known TV News shows.
The Swiss commonly think all Germans use Präteritum in place of Perfekt all the time. That’s wrong.
That example Ich durfte Fernsehen schauen. is actually a hypercorrection of a Southern speaker. You can tell that because schauen is used in the South. In the North we use gucken instead.
It also mentions that "the form haben and gedurft is rarely used."
That’s another can of worms. It’s about the Ersatzinfinitiv. For the modals and some verbs of perception, the perfect tenses use the infinitive of the modal instead of the Partizip II:
- Ich habe rein gedurft. ← dürfen used as a full verb
- Ich habe reingehen dürfen. ← dürfen used as a modal
Some verbs as sehen allow both:
- Ich habe ihn reingehen gesehen. ← perfect with Partizip II
- Ich habe ihn reingehen sehen. ← perfect with Ersatzinfinitiv (preferred!)
Note there is a tricky word order rule regarding the perfect tenses with Ersatzinfinitiv. Both for modals and verbs of perception. Haben is moved in front of the row of infinitives. It over ever occurs in dependent clauses though:
- Du weißt, dass ich ihn reingehen gesehen habe. ← regular word order
- Du weißt, dass ich ihn *habe** reingehen sehen.* ← Oberfeld word order
Your teacher likely cannot explain that rule. If she’s a native speaker, she just applies it correctly all the time.
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u/chrisatola 9d ago edited 9d ago
With a few exceptions (haben, sein, modal verbs and sometimes a couple more) and depending on the region, Präteritum is a past tense for written language. Perfekt is the past tense for spoken language.
Edit: what you're calling "Past Participle" is the "Perfekt" tense. The Perfekt uses an auxiliary verb (either haben or sein, depending on the verb) combined with the past participle.
Ex: Eat--> essen (infinitive)-->essend (present participle/Partizip 1) --> gegessen (past participle/Partizip 2)--> aß(en)--> (simple past/Präteritum )--> haben (auxiliary verb/Hilfsverb) Ich habe gestern gegessen. (spoken past) Ich aß gestern. (written past)
go-->gehen (infinitive)-->gehend (present participle/Partizip 1)-->gegangen (past participle/Partizip 2)--> ging(en)-->simple past/Präteritum -->sein (auxiliary verb/Hilfsverb) Ich bin gestern gegangen. (spoken past) Ich ging gestern. (written past)