A verb’s tense has to do with the time of the action, and its mood has to do with the reality of the action. To start with, here are some of the basic tenses and moods in English. Even if you’ve forgotten their names, the forms should look familiar:
- The Imperativ/Imperative mood is used for commands ("Go away!"; "Clean your room!"). It’s the easiest mood to learn in either language, because it only exists in the present tense and the second person. In German (but not in English) the infinitive form of the verb can also be used as an imperative in some circumstances.
Note: we said above that there’s no “useful” English equivalent to the Konjunktiv I. In fact, we do have sentences like “I suggest that you be careful” that are related in form, and many sources try to explain the German Konjunktiv moods in terms of these English Subjunctive/Conjunctive moods. But these comparisons are often just wrong and always more confusing than they’re worth. The terms subjunctive/conjunctive occur in multiple languages but often refer to different things, and the forms they refer to in English are complex enough that they could be a whole section on their own. So we’re not even going to consider the English subjunctive here, and neither should you. Even the conditional/Konjunktiv II comparison that we made above is not perfect. The Konjunktiv moods are one of the few concepts that you really have to learn in German to fully get them.
And now the tenses:
- The Präsens corresponds to the simple present tense in English ("I take the bus") as well as the “emphatic” ("I do take the bus"). It can also be used to refer to future events, in which case it’s called the Futuristisches Präsens (“futuristic present”). We have a futuristic present in English too (e.g. "I get paid tomorrow" means "I will get paid tomorrow") but in German it’s more common. And like all German verb forms, the Präsens can also translate to the equivalent continuous form in English, in this case "I am taking the bus." (See for more on this.)
- The Präteritum and Perfekt, as you can probably guess from their names, are closely related to the English preterite and perfect tenses. As described in the verb types at the beginning of this section, the Präteritum and English preterite are both formed with either a hard consonant ending (weak verbs), a vowel shift (strong verbs) or both (mixed verbs). The Perfekt is formed by conjugating the verb haben (or sometimes sein) in the present tense and adding the participle of the main verb, just the way we do with the verb "to have" in English. Again, these tenses do not translate directly between the two languages, despite their similar forms. In English we mainly use the preterite, but in spoken German the Perfekt dominates. We'll cover this in more detail in the section.
- The Plusquamperfekt is directly related to the past perfect (also called the pluperfect) in English. It’s used for an action that was already completed at some point in the past. It’s formed the same way as the Perfekt, except that it uses the past (Präteritum) form of haben or sein instead of the present form.
- the Futur I tense is similar to our future tense; it uses werden the same way we use "will" in English: "I will read it" --> Ich werde es lesen. But note that we have other ways of expressing the future in English (like I’m going to read it) that don’t exist in German – and they also use the futuristic present tense in ways that we wouldn’t. We’ll cover this in detail in the section on Future Tenses.
- the Futur II is similar to the English future perfect, with will have in English and werden haben/sein in German: "I will have read it" --> Ich werde es gelesen haben.
Finally, as in English, most of these tenses/moods also exist in a passive voice. Passive constructions in English usually (but not always) use a form of to be; in German they always use a form of the verb werden. This is the third major auxiliary usage of werden, after the Konjunktiv II and Futur usages mentioned above. We’ll cover the passive voice in .