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Modern German has lost its perfect aspect in the present tense. The present perfect form implies the perfective aspect and colloquially usually replaces the simple past (except in the verb sein 'to be'), but the simple past still is frequently used in non-colloquial and/or narrative registers.
Perfect (Perfekt) – It is the present-conjugated form of the perfect infinitive. This tense has (widely) the same meaning as the preterite and very often replaces the latter in colloquial German. An English perfect tense is often expressed by the present in German. For example, "I have lived in Germany for three years now."
The German present tense matches both the English present ("I walk to work every day") and also the present progressive ("I am walking to work right now"), to which standard German has no direct equivalent. (See below for a colloquial alternative.) It is formed similarly to the English present tense, by directly conjugating the relevant verb to ...
Present perfect progressive (progressive, perfect): "I have been eating" (While many elementary discussions of English grammar classify the present perfect as a past tense, it relates the action to the present time. One cannot say of someone now deceased that they "have eaten" or "have been eating". The present auxiliary implies that they are ...
For example, in comparison to the -s added to third-person singular present-tense verbs in English, most German verbs employ four different suffixes for the conjugation of present-tense verbs, namely - e for the first-person singular, - st for the informal second-person singular, - t for the third-person singular and for the informal second ...
The basic (present) perfect form, with the auxiliary in the present tense, may specifically carry the meaning of perfect aspect, as in English; however in some languages it is used more generally as a past tense (or preterite), as in French and German. The use of auxiliaries and meaning of the constructions in various languages are described below.
The so-called preterite-present verbs are a small group of anomalous verbs in the Germanic languages in which the present tense shows the form of the strong preterite. The preterite of the preterite-present verbs is weak. [1] As an example, take the third-person forms of modern German können "to be able to".
German sentence structure is the structure to which the German language adheres. The basic sentence in German follows SVO word order. [1] Additionally, German, like all west Germanic languages except English, [note 1] uses V2 word order, though only in independent clauses. In dependent clauses, the finite verb is placed last.