Practice some of the vocabulary from this song and its past Tense verbs using these flashcards, games and exercises.

Did you miss the analysis for this song? Find it here!

Activities

Vocabulary Excercises

We have only chosen 15 terms out of this song’s lyrics to form our vocabulary list, which can be found below. You can use the following activities to learn and practice this vocabulary.

Vocabulary Flashcards – Learn the vocabulary from this song with our sets of German to English and English to German flashcards, then test yourself with our interactive flashcards.

Vocabulary Games – Practice the vocabulary for this song using our memory and matching games and our word search puzzle.

Vocabulary Exercises – Fill in the missing vocabulary with drag and drop and fill in the blanks exercises.

Grammar Exercises

This song gave very little to practice grammatically. Though there aren’t a ton of verbs in the Imperfect tense, since there isn’t much else to practice and since we’ve never gone over the imperfect tense before that’s what I’ve chosen to focus on for this song. Full conjugations of these verbs can be found below. You can use the following activities to learn and practice these verbs.

Imperative Verb Flashcards – Practice the imperative verbs in this song with our sets of German to English and English to German flashcards, then test yourself with our interactive flashcards.

Imperative Verb Games – Practice the imperative verbs in this song using our memory and matching games.

Imperative Verb Exercises – Practice the imperative verbs in this song using our drag and drop, fill in, and highlighting exercises.

Resources

Vocabulary List

Imperfect Tense

The imperfect tense (also called the preterite in English and das Präteritum or das Imperfekt in German) is one of the the two tenses* in German that is normally used to discuss events that happened in the past. The other tense is the perfect or das Perfekt.

Speaking about the past in German is much simpler than in English, which has multiple tenses with differences in meaning. The German imperfect covers most past tense occurrences and can be used to translate a variety of English tenses. Let’s take for example the verb arbeiten, meaning to work. Ich arbeitete can translate as I worked, I have worked, I was working, or I did work.

* There is also the pluperfect tense, used to discuss an action that occurred prior to an aforementioned time in the past, but we’ll leave that for a later discussion.

Use of the Imperfect

Sounds simple right? If you’re speaking about the past, then you always use the imperfect. Well not so fast. Because the perfect tense (ich habe gearbeitet) can also be used and translated in the same ways.

So if they can both be used to mean the same thing, which tense should you use?

Unfortunately there are no hard-and-fast grammatical rules. You could use either form and be technically correct. Rather, the choice of the imperfect or the prefect is a matter of style. There are also clear tendencies to be found in the use of native speakers:

• The imperfect tense is not commonly used in conversation.
• The imperfect is commonly used in written language, especially in newspapers and books.
• The verbs sein, haben, werden and wissen are typically used in the imperfect, even in casual speech.
• The six modal verbs (können, müssen, mögen, dürfen, wollen, sollen) are also typically used in the imperfect, even in casual speech.
• The imperfect is commonly used in written language, especially in newspapers and books.
• The imperfect is more common in northern Germany.
• The imperfect is often viewed as sounding fancier or being more eloquent.

Forming the Imperfect Tense

The imperfect of regular verbs is formed by adding the endings in the chart below to the verb stem.

Please note that none of the verbs that appear in the imperfect in this song are regular verbs.

Conjugations

The following charts show the full conjugations of the imperfect verbs found in this song.

sitzen: to sit, be seated

sein: to be

werden: to get, become

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