Grammar: German past tense

That was a close call, wasn't it? But it turned out well in the end. In German, we say in such situations: Na, das ist ja noch einmal gut gegangen. A useful little phrase, repeat after me: Na, das ist ja noch einmal gut gegangen.

Now that we know Philip can leave the hospital, das Krankenhaus, again, let's take one more look at German grammar before you, too, will leave this course and move on to the next level.

In this dialogue you've heard Philip describe what happened on the ski slope. He was talking about something that happened in the past. In German, the tense we use most often to talk about the past is called the Perfekt. In this unit, we will take a first look at the Perfekt and how it is formed. First of all, you should know that it consists of two parts. The first part is an auxiliary. It's either a form of "to be" or a form of "to have". The second part is a special verb form called the participle.

We'll begin with the first part – to be or to have. Listen to these sentences from the dialogue:

Meine Freunde und ich sind Ski gefahren. → My friends and I went skiing.

Ich bin ziemlich langsam gefahren. → I was skiing pretty slowly.

Wir sind zusammengestoßen. → We collided.

Sind, bin, sind – all forms of "to be". Did you notice something that these sentences have in common? They are all about movement. So, for now, you can remember, we use a form of "to be" for movement.