Präteritum: the simple past tense

Both Präteritum and Perfekt translate to the English simple past ("I went", "I have gone"), but they are not interchangeable in German. Präteritum is the narrative and written past — the tense of novels, newspapers, fairy tales, and formal reports. Perfekt is the spoken past — what you use in everyday conversation. "Er ging nach Hause" (Präteritum) appears in written text; "Er ist nach Hause gegangen" (Perfekt) is what a German speaker would say out loud in virtually every region.

Spoken Präteritum survives mainly in a small set of high-frequency verbs: sein (war), haben (hatte), and the modal verbs (konnte, musste, durfte, sollte, wollte, mochte). These forms are so deeply embedded in everyday speech that their Perfekt equivalents ("ist gewesen", "hat gehabt") sound stilted. werden is not part of this set — both wurde and ist geworden occur naturally depending on meaning. Beyond that core, a handful of verbs like geben (gab), denken (dachte), and finden (fand) also appear in fixed spoken expressions. Most other verbs stay in Perfekt when speaking.

For regular (weak) verbs, add a -te- infix between the stem and the person ending: stem + -te- + ending. The full paradigm for machen: ich machte, du machtest, er/sie/es machte, wir machten, ihr machtet, sie/Sie machten. Notice that the 1st and 3rd person singular share the same form — both end in -te with no additional ending. This 1st = 3rd person collision is different from the present tense and trips up English speakers who expect a distinct 3rd-person form.

Strong verbs change their stem vowel (Ablaut) and take no -te- infix. The stem vowel changes are unpredictable and must be memorised: gehen → ging, sehen → sah, finden → fand, geben → gab. The 1st and 3rd person singular take no ending at all (bare stem): ich ging, er ging. The 2nd person singular adds -st (du gingst), and the plural endings mirror the present tense (-en, -t, -en): wir gingen, ihr gingt, sie gingen. Strong 1st = 3rd person singular is thus the bare Ablaut stem with zero ending.

Start with these high-frequency strong verb stems: sein→war, haben→hatte, werden→wurde, gehen→ging, kommen→kam, sehen→sah, geben→gab, nehmen→nahm, sprechen→sprach, finden→fand, stehen→stand, sitzen→saß, schreiben→schrieb, fahren→fuhr, laufen→lief, schlafen→schlief, essen→aß, trinken→trank, denken→dachte, wissen→wusste, bringen→brachte, kennen→kannte. These 22 forms cover the vast majority of Präteritum you will encounter in German texts.

Yes — every German verb has a grammatically correct Präteritum form. The question is never whether the form exists, but whether a native speaker would actually say it. Regular Präteritum forms like "ich machte" or "du kauftest" are correct but sound bookish or stiff in casual speech; a German speaker would say "ich habe gemacht" instead. The one practical constraint: modal verbs do not have a Perfekt used in speech, so their Präteritum forms (konnte, musste, wollte, etc.) are not bookish at all — they are the only spoken option.

Northern Germany does use spoken Präteritum slightly more than Bavaria, Austria, or Switzerland, but the regional split is often overstated. The dominant dividing line is register (narrative writing vs. casual conversation), not geography. The tendency that holds broadly: sein, haben, and the modal verbs are especially common in Präteritum in speech — no region normally replaces "war" with "ist gewesen" in casual conversation. It is a strong tendency rather than an absolute rule, and it does not extend to werden.

For speaking, almost — but not entirely. You must learn war (sein), hatte (haben), wurde (werden), and the six modal Präteritum forms (konnte, musste, durfte, sollte, wollte, mochte) because these are unavoidable in everyday spoken German. For reading any German book, news article, or fairy tale, Präteritum is the default tense; you will encounter strong-verb stems on every page. Budget time at A2 to learn the 20–25 most common strong stems and you will handle 90 % of written Präteritum you encounter.