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German perfect tense

The German perfect tense: haben or sein?

The perfect (Perfekt) is how German talks about the past in conversation: haben or sein in second place, the past participle at the end. Choosing between them is easier than it looks: of the 376 past participles among the 5,000 most common German words, 351 take haben. sein is the exception — 21 of them, and 4 that can take either.

How the perfect is built

  • Ich habe gestern einen Kuchen gebacken. I baked a cake yesterday.
  • Wir sind am Wochenende nach Hause gefahren. We went home at the weekend.
  • Hast du den Film schon gesehen? Have you seen the film yet?

The form of haben or sein takes the verb’s usual place — second — and the participle goes to the very end, with everything else in between. See German word order.

The verbs that take sein

Two groups, and a handful of verbs to learn on their own:

  • Movement from one place to another: gehen, kommen, fahren, fliegen, ankommen, folgen.
  • A change of state: werden, wachsen, sterben, entstehen, steigen, sinken, verschwinden.
  • And sein, bleiben, passieren, gelingen, scheitern.

These are all the participles in the list that take sein:

Verbs that take either

sein when they describe movement, haben when they have a direct object.

gefahren (fahren)

  • Ich bin nach Berlin gefahren. I drove / went to Berlin.
  • Ich habe das Auto in die Werkstatt gefahren. I drove the car to the garage.

gestartet (starten)

  • Das Flugzeug ist pünktlich gestartet. The plane took off on time.
  • Wir haben das Projekt im Mai gestartet. We started the project in May.

gezogen (ziehen)

  • Sie ist nach Hamburg gezogen. She has moved to Hamburg.
  • Er hat das Boot ans Ufer gezogen. He pulled the boat onto the bank.

getreten (treten)

  • Sie ist ins Zimmer getreten. She stepped into the room.
  • Er hat den Ball ins Tor getreten. He kicked the ball into the goal.

The most common participles with haben

The 376 participles were found by their form (ge-…-t, ge-…-en, or no ge- after be-, ver-, er- and the other inseparable prefixes) and checked by hand; which verbs take sein is written out by us.

How the participle is formed

281 of the 376 end in -t (regular) and 95 in -en (irregular). The irregular ones are the old, everyday verbs, so they are worth learning as pairs: sehen – gesehen, finden – gefunden, nehmen – genommen.

Questions

When do you use sein in the German perfect tense?

With verbs of movement from one place to another (gehen, fahren, kommen), verbs of change (werden, wachsen, sterben, entstehen), and sein, bleiben, passieren and gelingen. Everything else — including every verb with a direct object and every reflexive verb — takes haben.

How many German verbs take sein?

Few. Of the 376 past participles among the 5,000 most common German words, 21 take sein and 4 can take either; the other 351 take haben.

Perfekt or Präteritum?

In conversation, the perfect: Ich habe gestern Fußball gespielt. The simple past (Präteritum) is for written narrative — and for sein, haben and the modal verbs, which use it in speech too: ich war, ich hatte, ich konnte.

Is it ich bin gesessen or ich habe gesessen?

Both exist. Northern Germany uses haben with sitzen, stehen and liegen; southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland use sein: ich bin gesessen.

More German grammar