The Narrative Past

By: Dan Henderson

Dedicated to: Schuma the Puma

Hey Frau! What’s the narrative past?

• The narrative past is another way to speak in the past tense, usually found in books and newspapers, but isn’t common in conversations.

• The narrative past is also known as the simple past, because it’s one of the easiest tenses you’ve learnt since the great days of German I.

Well Frau, why is the narrative past so simple?

Unlike the future and present perfect tenses, the narrative past does not use an auxillary verb (Such as werden and haben), but only uses a modified form of the verb.

• Verbs that are irregular in the present perfect are also irregular in the narrative past, so you have slightly less memorizing!

Frau, the words modified forms and irregular verbs scare me.

• The modified forms of the verbs are actually simple, though. You simply take the stem of the verb (zeigen, machen) and add a -te at the end (zeigte, machte)

• Irregular verbs are slightly trickier, but we’ll cover those later.

Okay... Well... How do you use the narrative past?

• Well, let’s start at the beginning again. Take the stem of the verb, then add these endings.– Te --Ten– Test --Tet– Te --Ten

New verb endings!? Nooooooooooo

• The verb endings are simple! Just remember that after the -te is added, they are just like modal auxillary (können, sollen, müssen) endings.

• In fact, the modal auxillary endings are the exact same ones that are used for irregular verbs.

Why did you have to bring up irregular verbs.

• The irregular verbs are a bit worse than the regular verbs, but not by much.

• Irregular verbs come in two forms, normal irregular and weak irregular.– Normal irregular use modified form of the

stem only (Kam, ging)– Weak irregulars use a modified form and

also have a -te at the end (Kannte, wusste)

Those irregular verbs looked nothing like their actual stem.

• Most irregular verbs do look quite different from their stem, and you will mostly have to memorize the forms. Some stems fall under categories like those in the perfect past though, so that well help. A bit.

But Fraaaaaau, we hate memorizing stuff.

• Shut up and learn your endings.– (No ending) -- Ten– St -- Tet– (No ending) -- Ten

Just like the modals!

Remember, the weak irregular verbs have the same endings as regular verbs do.