German grammar tips (Image made with Canva). Learning German and unsure when to use ‘haben’ or ‘sein’? Here’s the quick pattern that helps you pick the right helper verb most of the time.

German does have another past tense, called the Präteritum, but this is almost exclusively used in written German. Most verbs take haben, but verbs of movement or change of state generally take sein.

When you look up a verb in the dictionary what you find is the verb in the infinitive form. In English it’s two words - ‘to swim’ - but in German it’s just the one schwimmen. In German, there’s a ...