Someone who speaks German.

[Weeks]

Where the bloody hell is the imperfect in your language?

For example:
"It was raining when I read the book"
The first section is in the imperfect tense, and the second part is in the perfect tense.

I've know Ich habe das buch gelesen.
But where is your imperfect tense?

I'm not looking for a translation of the sentence above just and what tense you'd use to express what is the imperfect tense in the english and french languages.

Thanks, a lot.

p.s. is wu_trax the only German on this borad?

[Leshy]

I believe German just uses the past simple or whatever it's called in English.

[Androme]

Ooooh I studied this for GCSE!!

Um......tries to remember...

But - it would help to go look up Google - it often helped me with German h/w

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...e+Search&meta=

[Weeks]

/me waits for wu_trax or another german.

[wu_trax]

never ask a native speaker any gramatical questions. im not even exactly sure what imperfect means
but after reading this http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperfekt im pretty sure its 'Es regnete als ich das Buch gelesen habe.'
usually, in real life, you would say ' Es hat geregnet als ich das Buch gelesen habe.'

[SYMM]

hmm...if regen is regular, which I think it is, then you just take the stem, and add te, so "es regnete". The "was" in english is, I believe, omitted (we have multiple present tenses: it rains, it is raining etc., wherease german has just 1- es regnen).
If it's not regular, then the imperfect form will be in the verb-table at the back of a english-german dictionary...

[wu_trax]

the verb is regnen. Regen is the noun

[SYMM]

oh yeah, I changed it after the first one

[Weeks]

Yeah I was coming to think that Germans use the simple past where the English and French use the imperfect.

However, if you'd actually say ' Es hat geregnet als ich das Buch gelesen habe.'
for it was raining that means you use the perfect tense to set the scene?


wu_trax, how would you you say

(1) It was raining, (2) the birds were singing when all of a sudden (3) I saw her.

Because the English would use the imperfect for (1) and (2) as they're setting the scene and they'd use the perfect for (3) as it's the main action in the sentance.

[Androme]

All of this could have been found out via my google link...

[Summanus]

wtf is an imperfect?

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by Summanus

wtf is an imperfect?

It's the tense that describes continuous action in the past.

[Aviendha]

They taught me long ago in college that in german you have to keep the tempus order in mind.
Since it's pretty much very alike the flemish grammar, we never paid much attention to it, but compared to english i guess it's a usefull tool to decide the tenses.

In german there are 2 grps of tempora, within one sentence you can only have verbs in tenses within 1 group. (You'll have to look up the tempus groups somewhere on internet or a grammar book to list em all, i forgot already 10 years later heh)
Also you want to try to use twice the same tense within the one sentence if the actions happened simultaneously. Like in your first example, it was raining, and you were reading the book at the same time. So in good grammar you should use the same tense twice.

In a colloquial way, you'd say 'It was raining when i read that book', but it could also be 'It rained when i read that book' which would follow the base rule of same tenses more.
Again in flemish (which is pretty close to german compared to english) colloquially we'd use either, imperfect and perfect are interchangeable here.

So the translation of your first sentence could very well be
Es regnete als ich das Buch las.
or
Es hat geregnet als ich das Buch gelesen habe

Imperfects are used when an action isn't finished instanteneously, when it's an ongoing action.
Since both the reading of the book and the raining are ongoing things, you would do best to use either twice a perfect tense or an imperfect tense to fall in line with the base rule of clean grammar by using same tenses when possible. But both are correct. Even the imperfect for the raining and the perfect for the reading would be correct, but is discouraged.

[Obliterate]

Originally Posted by Weeks

wu_trax, how would you you say

(1) It was raining, (2) the birds were singing when all of a sudden (3) I saw her.

Because the English would use the imperfect for (1) and (2) as they're setting the scene and they'd use the perfect for (3) as it's the main action in the sentance.

(1) Es regnete und (2) die Vögel sangen. Plötzlich (3) habe ich sie gesehen.

That's how I would say it (I'm not a native speaker, just learning A-Level german, so I could be wrong I guess). I suppose you could change the last bit to "Plötzlich sah ich sie" (imperfect) but that looks a bit weird to me.

I don't think "I saw" is the perfect tense of the verb "to see". That would be "I have seen".

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by Aviendha

They taught me long ago in college that in german you have to keep the tempus order in mind.
Since it's pretty much very alike the flemish grammar, we never paid much attention to it, but compared to english i guess it's a usefull tool to decide the tenses.

In german there are 2 grps of tempora, within one sentence you can only have verbs in tenses within 1 group. (You'll have to look up the tempus groups somewhere on internet or a grammar book to list em all, i forgot already 10 years later heh)
Also you want to try to use twice the same tense within the one sentence if the actions happened simultaneously. Like in your first example, it was raining, and you were reading the book at the same time. So in good grammar you should use the same tense twice.

As a philologist, I'd like to point out that that's a completely stupid way to run a language.

Originally Posted by Aviendha

In a colloquial way, you'd say 'It was raining when i read that book', but it could also be 'It rained when i read that book' which would follow the base rule of same tenses more.

But they mean completely different things. The first means "While I read that book it was raining" and the second means "When I read that book it began to rain".

Originally Posted by Aviendha

Again in flemish (which is pretty close to german compared to english) colloquially we'd use either, imperfect and perfect are interchangeable here.

So the translation of your first sentence could very well be
Es regnete als ich das Buch las.
or
Es hat geregnet als ich das Buch gelesen habe

Like I said, that's stupid. What's the point of having two tenses if they're interchangeable?

Originally Posted by Aviendha

Imperfects are used when an action isn't finished instanteneously, when it's an ongoing action.
Since both the reading of the book and the raining are ongoing things, you would do best to use either twice a perfect tense or an imperfect tense to fall in line with the base rule of clean grammar by using same tenses when possible. But both are correct. Even the imperfect for the raining and the perfect for the reading would be correct, but is discouraged.

But they aren't both ongoing actions. The reading of the book is aorist, i.e. it happened, it's an event. The raining is a continuous thing that, for all we know, could have been going on before the book was read and continued after it was read. (If the reading were imperfect it'd be "when I was reading that book it was raining", which has a different meaning again - we don't know when the reading started or whether it is finished. [Consider this exchange: "Did it rain yesterday?" "When I was reading that book it was raining."])

[wu_trax]

Originally Posted by Weeks

Yeah I was coming to think that Germans use the simple past where the English and French use the imperfect.

However, if you'd actually say ' Es hat geregnet als ich das Buch gelesen habe.'
for it was raining that means you use the perfect tense to set the scene?


wu_trax, how would you you say

(1) It was raining, (2) the birds were singing when all of a sudden (3) I saw her.

Because the English would use the imperfect for (1) and (2) as they're setting the scene and they'd use the perfect for (3) as it's the main action in the sentance.

im with Obliterate on this. everything else looks a bit weird. but as someone else pointed out: you can use both tenses or mix them. most of the times people use the Perfekt for everything, but if you like you can use the Präteritum

[JetLinus]

Here I am, another German (not that active but reading these boards quite often)...

All I can say from my experience in learning English is:
You guys have got more specific ways (i.e. more tenses) to describe situations in the past. In Germany we usually use the "Perfekt" in common (spoken) language, and the "Imperfekt / Praeteritum" (same thing, but 2 different words for it) when writing. They are essentially the "simple past", just one way to describe what happened / was happening.

That's why it's difficult when learning English to distinguish between all the tenses. You always have to ask yourself as German "hmmm, when exactly did this happen? Was it a continuous process, or was it one short action?", as you're not used to it.

There is one not very common tense in German, the "Plusquamperfekt", which is comparable to the past perfect.
You use it when you're talking in the past already and want to mention things that have happened before another point in time. Much like in English I guess.

[JetLinus]

Originally Posted by Weeks

However, if you'd actually say ' Es hat geregnet als ich das Buch gelesen habe.'
for it was raining that means you use the perfect tense to set the scene?

You could either say it the way you said (probably while talking to somebody; common speech), or just use Imperfekt twice:

"Es regnete, während ich das Buch las."

This version is formal, as you'd find it in a book for example. Note I changed "als" to "während" (<- during / while) to underline the point that both actions were actually happening at the same time. Those praepositions are pretty much the only helpers you've got to specify what you mean, I guess.

Originally Posted by Weeks

how would you you say

(1) It was raining, (2) the birds were singing when all of a sudden (3) I saw her.

Because the English would use the imperfect for (1) and (2) as they're setting the scene and they'd use the perfect for (3) as it's the main action in the sentance.

First of all, in school I was taught the English tenses are called (1) + (2) past progressive and (3) simple past, whereas the perfect would be (4) "I've seen her".
Also they taught us a stupid tense perfect progressive with something like (5) "I've been seeing her".


So my approach for your example would be:

• (1) Es hat geregnet und (2) die Vögel haben gesungen, (3) als ich sie plötzlich gesehen habe.
  (informal)
  
  
• (1) Es regnete und (2) die Vögel sangen, (3) als ich sie plötzlich sah.
  (formal)