How to form the “Partizip 2” in German past tense?

You will quickly want to speak in the past tense when studying German. As Germans mostly use the “Perfekt”-tense in conversations, knowing how to form “Partizip 2” is essential. Get to know everything needed in this article!

Speaking about the past

In German, there are three past tenses: Präteritum (simple past – e.g., I went), Perfekt (Present Perfect – e.g., I have gone) and Plusquamperfekt (Past Perfect – e.g., I had gone). Though each has its right to exist, we primarily use “Perfekt” in spoken modern German. Therefore, it is the first past tense that students learn very often.

Forming the “Perfekt”

To build a sentence in the “Perfekt”-tense, we need to do two things:

1. Find the suitable auxiliary verb (haben / sein)

2. Put the actual verb in the right form (alias Partizip 2)

Recommended study materials on the topic:

1. Exercises – “haben” and “sein” in German perfect tense (incl. answers)

2. Perfect package – overview & exercises (incl. answers)

3. Mindmemo – poster all German times

4. German self-study book for A1-B1  (incl. answers)

5. A-Grammar: Practice German grammar (incl. answers)

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What is Partizip 2?

When speaking in English past tense, you need to change the form of your verb to express something in the past tense. When using a regular verb in English, such as “to learn”, we would usually add “-ed” to say that it already happened. We do something similar in German called Partizip 2 / Partizip II. Besides the Perfect tense (Ich habe gekauft. – I have bought.), we can form the following constructions with its help:

• Plusquamperfekt tense (Ich hatte gekauft. – I had bought.)

• Futur 2 tense (Ich werde gekauft haben. – I will have bought.)

• Passive (Es wurde von mir gekauft. – It was bought by me.)

How to form Partizip 2

It hopefully has become clear now that you should understand Partizip 2 because you will need it for at least four grammatical phenomena. There are different verb groups in German, which also include irregular forms that we will discuss in more detail now.

1. “Normal” verbs

This group includes all classical verb forms that do not have any specialty. However, there are also irregular verbs in this group, and in the following, you will learn how to form their Partizip II.

Regular verbs

When you want to change your verb to Partizp 2, put your verb stem into the frame: ge + verb stem + t.

For example:

“lernen” – “to study”

1. remove the “en” from your verb to get the stem of your verb.

2. put “lern-” in the following frame: gelernt (studied)

For lieben (to love), this would mean: lieb- = geliebt (loved)

For kochen (to cook), this would mean: koch- = gekocht (cooked)

As you can see, they all follow the same patterns.

Irregular verbs

In Partizip 2, all irregular verbs will have the ending “en” instead of “t,” and if you struggle to realize which verb is irregular, you can learn them by heart or orient yourself on the English ones (which mostly are the same in German). The pattern for irregular verbs is ge + verb stem + en.

However, the problem with irregular verbs is that they change their stem, which is mostly unpredictable. If you do not know the past form but know your verb is irregular, you need to guess what changes.

For example:

In the case of schreiben (to write), this would mean geschrieben (written).

For bleiben (to stay), this would mean: geblieben (stayed)

For gehen (to go), this would mean: gegangen (gone)

2. Separable verbs with prefix

In German, we have verbs with a prefix that you need to separate from each other, for instance, “aufstehen” – “Ich stehe um 8 Uhr auf.”

The fact that you have to split these verbs is also relevant for the past tense, and, besides the prefix, they entirely behave the same as “normal” verbs.

Regular separable verbs with prefix

The rule you have to follow is: prefix + ge + verb stem + t

For einkaufen (to do shopping), this would mean: eingekauft

For abwarten (to wait), this would mean: abgewartet

Irregular separable verbs with prefix

The rule you have to follow is: prefix + ge + verb stem + en 

For aufschreiben (to write down), this would mean: aufgeschrieben 

For aufbleiben (to stay up), this would mean: aufgeblieben

3. Inseparable verbs with prefix

As you already know, there are also inseparable verbs with prefixes in German. Because we do not separate the prefix, they get an ending to the verb stem “-t” for regular and “-en” for irregular ones, but no “ge” in the beginning.

Regular inseparable verbs with prefix

The rule you have to follow is: verb stem + t 

For besuchen (to visit), this would mean: besucht 

For erzählen (to tell), this would mean: erzählt

Irregular inseparable verbs with prefix

The rule you have to follow is: verb stem + en

For beschreiben (to describe), this would mean: beschrieben 

For entkommen (to escape), this would mean: entkommen

4. Verbs with -ieren

The last group is the German verbs with -ieren. Besides the fact that students can often realize their meaning because they are typically loanwords from other languages, forming their Partizip II is very simple.

The rule you have to follow is: verb stem + t

For kopieren (to copy), this would mean: kopiert

For fotografieren (to take photos), this would mean: fotografiert

Forming Partizip 2

I hope that this article could make clear that you need to know two things to form Partizip II:

1. To which group does my verb belong?

2. Is the verb regular or irregular?

As we focused on forming Partizip 2 in this article, you might also want to check out when to use “sein” or “haben” in Perfect tense if you want a quick reminder when to use which auxiliary verb.

Bis bald!

Steffie

Hi there, I'm Stefanie, the author of the blog post you're reading.

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