German Tenses
German gets by with fewer tenses than English. Master the present and the perfect first — they cover most of everyday speech.
12 lessons · a few minutes each
A1 · Beginner
All A1 grammar →A2 · Elementary
All A2 grammar →- Present perfectTalk about the past the way Germans speak
- Past participleBuild any participle: gemacht, gegangen, angerufen
- sein or haben (Perfekt)Pick the right helper verb every time
- Simple pastRead stories and use war, hatte, konnte
- Future tenseMake plans, promises and predictions
- Infinitive with zuSay 'to do' the German way, including um … zu
B1 · Intermediate
All B1 grammar →B2 · Upper intermediate
All B2 grammar →Other grammar topics
- Nouns & Articlesder, die, das, plurals and compound nouns
- Pronounsich, mich, mir — and when to say du or Sie
- VerbsConjugation, modal and separable verbs
- CasesNominative, accusative, dative, genitive
- PrepositionsWhich case each preposition takes
- AdjectivesEndings, comparative and superlative
- AdverbsWords for when, where and how
- Sentence StructureWord order, questions and negation
- Conjunctionsund, aber, weil, dass — and where the verb goes
- NumbersCounting, ordinals, prices and phone numbers
- Time & DatesTelling the time and saying the date
- Passive Voicewerden + participle in every tense