The Simple Past: Irregular Verbs
Learn the Präteritum of the strong and mixed verbs — ging, kam, wusste, brachte — which change their stem vowel, and refresh the modal past forms you already know.
Strong verbs change their vowel
The last lesson gave you the regular -te pattern: machte, wohnte, arbeitete. The most frequent German verbs, however, refuse it. Instead of adding -te, they change their stem vowel: gehen becomes ging, kommen becomes kam, fahren becomes fuhr, sehen becomes sah. These are the strong verbs, and they dominate every written narrative.
The vowel change should not surprise you. At A2 you learned irregular participles — gegangen, gekommen, gefahren — so you already know these verbs live by their own rules. The Präteritum is simply a third form to store alongside the infinitive and the participle: gehen, ging, gegangen; kommen, kam, gekommen.
There is no shortcut around memorisation, but the workload is smaller than it looks. Roughly sixty strong verbs cover almost everything you will read, and many follow family patterns: bleiben — blieb, schreiben — schrieb, and steigen — stieg all share ei to ie.
Nach der Arbeit ging ich noch schnell in den Supermarkt.
After work I quickly went to the supermarket.
Der Techniker kam erst am Nachmittag.
The technician did not come until the afternoon.
Wir fuhren jeden Sommer an die Ostsee.
We drove to the Baltic Sea every summer.
Sie schrieb mir eine lange E-Mail und blieb das ganze Wochenende zu Hause.
She wrote me a long e-mail and stayed at home all weekend.
schreiben — schrieb and bleiben — blieb follow the same ei to ie pattern.
The endings: bare in the first and third person
Strong verbs take a distinctive set of endings. The ich-form and the er/sie/es-form have no ending at all: ich ging, er ging; ich kam, sie kam. The other persons add the familiar endings to the changed stem: du gingst, wir gingen, ihr gingt, sie gingen.
This bare first and third person is the give-away that you are looking at a strong verb. Compare er lernte — regular, with -te — and er ging — strong, no -te, changed vowel. When you read a text, that contrast lets you sort every past form instantly.
Everything else behaves as usual. Separable verbs split in a main clause: Der Zug kam pünktlich an. In a subordinate clause the verb moves to the end: ..., als der Zug ankam. Note als here — you met it at A2 as the word for a single completed event in the past, and it pairs naturally with the Präteritum in writing.
Ich sah das Stellenangebot in der Zeitung.
I saw the job advertisement in the newspaper.
No ending in the ich-form: ich sah, not ich sahte.
Der Zug kam mit zwanzig Minuten Verspätung an.
The train arrived twenty minutes late.
Separable verbs split in the Präteritum too: kam ... an.
Als ich nach Deutschland kam, sprach ich noch kein Wort Deutsch.
When I came to Germany, I did not yet speak a word of German.
als introduces a single past event and sends kam to the end of its clause.
Mixed verbs and the modals
A small group of verbs combines both systems: they change their vowel and still add -te. These mixed verbs include wissen — wusste, bringen — brachte, denken — dachte, kennen — kannte and nennen — nannte. They are few, but all of them are everyday words, so learn the group as a set.
The modal verbs belong to the same club, and here you can relax: you already learned musste, konnte, wollte, durfte and sollte at A2 as the normal way to put a modal into the past. What is new at B1 is only the label — these forms are Präteritum — and the observation that the umlaut of the infinitive disappears: müssen — musste, können — konnte, dürfen — durfte.
Because the modal past forms are so short and common, German uses them even in speech, exactly like war and hatte. Ich habe arbeiten müssen exists, but ich musste arbeiten is what everyone actually says and writes.
Ich wusste nicht, dass die Bewerbungsfrist schon vorbei war.
I did not know that the application deadline had already passed.
Meine Kollegin brachte jeden Freitag Kuchen mit.
My colleague brought cake every Friday.
bringen — brachte: vowel change plus the -te ending of the regular verbs.
Damals kannte ich noch niemanden in der Stadt.
Back then I did not know anyone in the city yet.
Ich musste am Anfang viele Formulare ausfüllen und konnte nur wenig verstehen.
At the beginning I had to fill in many forms and could understand only a little.
The modal past forms from A2 — musste, konnte — are Präteritum forms and are normal even in speech.
Reading and writing past narratives
With the strong and mixed verbs in place, written German opens up. A typical narrative mixes both patterns freely: Ich begann im März bei der Firma. Am ersten Tag zeigte mir eine Kollegin das Büro, und der Chef nannte mir meine Aufgaben. Regular zeigte sits beside strong begann and mixed nannte, and the reader never notices the seam.
One form deserves special mention: es gab, the past of es gibt. It is the standard way to say that something existed or was available, and it appears in almost every report: Es gab viele Bewerber. In der Kantine gab es jeden Tag ein warmes Essen.
When you write your own past narrative, hold on to the register rule from the last lesson: Präteritum for the connected written account, Perfekt when you speak. And when you meet an unknown past form while reading, work backwards — strip the ending, consider the vowel, and you will usually recognise the infinitive underneath.
Ich begann im März bei einer kleinen Firma in Leipzig.
I started at a small company in Leipzig in March.
Es gab damals nur wenige freie Wohnungen in der Stadt.
There were only a few available flats in the city back then.
es gab is the past of es gibt and appears in almost every written report.
Am ersten Tag zeigte mir eine Kollegin das Büro, und ich fand alle sehr freundlich.
On the first day a colleague showed me the office, and I found everyone very friendly.
Regular zeigte and strong fand stand side by side in one sentence.
Check yourself
Quick checks on this lesson. Get at least three quarters right to mark it as completed.
What is the Präteritum of "er geht"?
Practise what you learned