Modern German Grammar: A Practical Guide, Second Edition

The simple past forms of gehen and kommen are:

NOTE The ich form and the er/sie/es/man forms are simply the changed verb stem without any ending
at all.

The change in the verb stem needs to be learnt for all strong verbs:

Thus, if we know that the verb singen ‘to sing’ has the simple past sang, we can predict

the following forms: ich sang ‘I sang’, du sangst ‘you (familiar) sang’, sie sang ‘she

sang’, wir sangen ‘we sang’, etc.

(c) The perfect and pluperfect tenses of strong verbs are formed with the past participle

(33.1b), and this is formed by adding ge- to the beginning of the verb stem and -(e)n to

the end. The verbs gehen ‘to go’, kommen ‘to come’ and singen ‘to sing’ have the

following forms:

The finite verb in these tenses is not always a form of haben (see 33.8).

NOTE Verbs beginning with an inseparable prefix (see 57.2) do not add ge- in forming the past
participle. For example, the verbs bekommen ‘to receive’ and vergehen ‘to pass’ (of time)
have the following forms:

ich ging kam

du gingst kamst

Sie (sing. and pl.) gingen kamen

er/sie/es/man ging kam

wir gingen kamen

ihr ginget kamt

sie gingen kamen

Infinitive Simple past

gehen ging

kommen kam

etc. etc.

Infinitive Past

participle

Perfect tense Pluperfect tense

gehen gegangen ich bin gegangen ich war gegangen (see 80.7a, d)

kommen gekommen ich bin gekommen ich war gekommen (see 80.7a)

singen gesungen ich habe gesungen ich hatte gesungen

Infinitive Past participle Perfect tense Pluperfect tense

vergehen vergangen es ist vergangen es war vergangen

bekommen bekommen ich habe bekommen ich hatte bekommen

33

Verb forms