Simple past of regular verbs (machte)

The Präteritum (simple past) is the written narrative past in German - used in stories, reports and books, while spoken German usually prefers the Perfekt. Regular (also called weak) verbs form it with a fixed marker.

How it is formed: take the verb stem and add the tense marker -te, then the personal ending.

• ich machte, du machtest, er/sie/es machte
• wir machten, ihr machtet, sie/Sie machten

Note that the ich and er/sie/es forms are identical and take no extra ending.

If the stem ends in -t, -d or an awkward consonant cluster, an extra -e- is inserted to make it pronounceable: arbeiten → arbeitete, öffnen → öffnete, regnen → regnete.

Examples:

• Gestern kaufte ich frisches Brot. - Yesterday I bought fresh bread.
• Sie lernte drei Jahre lang Deutsch. - She learned German for three years.
• Das Kind arbeitete konzentriert. - The child worked with concentration.

Common mistakes: Forgetting the inserted -e- after stems in -t/-d (wrongly writing arbeitte). Also, learners sometimes add an ending to ich/er (ich machtee) - these forms simply end in -te.

Regular (weak) verbs form the simple past by adding -te to the stem before the personal ending.

Weak verbs add the marker -te to the stem and then the personal endings: ich machte, du machtest, er machte, wir machten. Stems ending in -t/-d insert -e- (arbeitete).

Regelmäßige (schwache) Verben bilden das Präteritum mit dem Tempuszeichen -te am Stamm.