German · Chapter 6 · Lesson 8 · Grammar primer
The perfect: the past Germans speak
Pick the right helper verb, bolt on a participle, and the only real decision is haben or sein.
The short version
Journeys and changes take sein, the rest take haben
In the German perfect, verbs of moving from place to place (gehen, kommen, fahren) and of changing state (werden, sterben, passieren) take sein, and so do sein and bleiben. Everything else takes haben. Quick test: if the verb can take a direct object, it takes haben.
Ich bin nach Hause gegangen und habe ein Buch gelesen.
The German perfect happily takes yesterday
English will not let you say I have seen him yesterday. German will: its perfect covers both I saw and I have seen, and it is the normal spoken past. The exceptions are war, hatte and the modals, which Germans say in the simple past even in conversation.
Ich habe ihn gestern gesehen.
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