The Present Perfect Tense (Das Perfekt)

The Present Perfect Tense in English:

The present perfect tense describes a past event that has present tense implications (compare the simple past "I cooked twice this week" with the present perfect: "I have cooked twice this week" - the former implies that that's all the cooking I'm going to do, while the latter suggests that I might cook more).

English forms this tense with a combination of the auxiliary verb "to have" and a past participle: "I have noticed that," "She has gone there twice," etc. The name "present perfect" reflects the fact that the auxiliary verb, "to have," is conjugated in its present-tense forms.

Some verbs long ago used "to be" as the auxiliary, and we find vestiges of this structure in biblical English or old nursery rhymes:

Weak and strong verbs form past participles differently.

Weak verbs add "-ed": "looked," "wanted," "worked," etc.

Strong, or irregular, verbs generally (but not always) change the vowel in the stressed syllable and typically (but not always) add "-n" or "-en": "risen," "written," "eaten," "sung," "slept," "brought," etc.

Using the Present Perfect Tense (das Perfekt) in German:

In German, as in English, the present perfect differs from the simple past, in that it describes past events that have present implications. German speakers are not always careful in making this distinction, however. Indeed, they sometimes even mix the two tenses indiscriminately.

Even more important: in colloquial conversation, Germans use the present perfect almost exclusively. Indeed, many dialects do not even have a simple past, which is thus mostly reserved for written narrations. Colloquial accounts are in the present perfect: "Ich bin nach Hause gegangen und habe meinem Mann gesagt...." There are a few exceptions, such as the verb "sein" and the modal auxiliaries. It is quite common to use the less complex "ich war da" instead or "ich bin da gewesen" or "sie konnte ihn sehen" rather than "sie hat ihn sehen können." Even in ordinary speech it is more usual to say "ich musste einen Arzt rufen lassen" than "ich habe einen Arzt rufen lassen müssen." "Er hatte einen Hund" is also possible in place of "Er hat einen Hunde gehabt."

Forming the Present Perfect Tense in German:

Weak verbs typically form the past participle by adding the prefix "ge-" and a suffix of "-t" or "-et" to the stem:

If the verb has a separable prefix, the "ge" becomes an infix; it is placed between the prefix and the stem: