Berlin Beats - The perfect tense

Makeda: Tschüss Marco, danke für den Tanzunterricht!

Marco: Kein Problem! Tschüss Makeda.

Rapper: Und wie war es?

Makeda: Agh! Richtig gut! Ich springe so, und dann mache ich so, so, so. Es macht richtig Spaß! Rapper, let's make a vlog showing everyone back in England Marco's skills, and maybe teach them some German too.

Rapper: Ja. Sounds good. So let's go over what you did with Marco then. And I've got the perfect tense for that.

Makeda: What's that?

Rapper: Um, the perfect tense. It's actually called the perfect tense.

Makeda: What makes it so perfect?

Rapper: Um, you can make some great sentences in the past with it?

Makeda: Ok, we'll go with that.

Rapper: You use a person, ‘to have’, and a verb in the past form.

Makeda: Oh! You have that in English too. It's the one where you say "I have done" or "I have eaten," or sometimes even I did, I played, I had, right?

Rapper: Yeah, we do it the same way in German. There's a person, then ‘haben’, and a verb in the past. That's called a past participle. There's a person, then ‘haben’, and a verb in the past. That's called a past participle.

Makeda: A past particle?

Rapper: No, a past participle. To make it, you build around the verb. So at the beginning you put 'ge-', and at the end, you replace the dictionary version's '-en' ending with a '-t'.

Makeda: The perrrfect past, huh?

Rapper: We have perfect-ed it over many years.

Makeda: I see what you did there! Sounds pretty easy anyway. So 'machen' would be 'ge-mach-t'?

Rapper: Yes, and spielen?

Makeda: Ge-spiel-t. Gespielt. Und 'haben' would be 'gehabt'.

Rapper: Exactly. So what was I going to say? Oh yeah. Um, Marco hat getanzt. Und du hast das gelernt.

Makeda: Ich habe sehr fleißig gelernt!

Rapper: Good, Makeda! You knew to put the second verb at the end of the sentence. Two verbs can never be at the second place of a sentence together. So you've got to make it a sentence sandwich.

Makeda: Number two just can't stand the competition.

Rapper: Yeah, you could say that! The verb is always the second idea in the sentence, and two verbs can't be both in second place, so the first verb kicks the second one, right down to the end of the sentence. So the first verb kicks the second one, right down to the end of the sentence forming a sentence sandwich: Marco hat einen Spagat gemacht. So one verb is in second place and the other one right at the end. Forming a sentence sandwich with all the tasty details in the middle, two bready verbs surrounding that, and the person in front looking forward to eating it. Just like me and your mum's potato chicken sandwiches.

Makeda: I knew it! Always with the chicken sandwich. So it's person, ‘haben’, details, round it up with a nice past participle. Person, ‘haben’, details, ‘ge…t’. Ich habe gut getanzt. Ich habe viel gelacht, Ich habe einen Spagat gemacht.

Rapper: Exactly.

Makeda: Alright, up!

Rapper: Really? Wirklich? Um. But, I'm not doing the splits, right? Ich mache keinen Spagat.

Makeda: Oh yeah, you are. Come on, up!

Rapper: Ok, but first a warm up dance.

Makeda: Of course. I'll show you what I did with Marco. Ich habe meine Arme hoch gemacht. Er hat seine Arme hoch gemacht, Er hat sein Bein raus gestretch-t.

Rapper: Um, gestreckt.

Makeda: Ich habe meinen Körper gedreht. Er hat seinen Körper auch gedreht. Er hat eine Bodenwelle gemacht.

Rapper: Wh- what?

Makeda: Und ich habe auch eine Bodenwelle gemacht. Ich mache jetzt eine Bodenwelle! Und du auch!

Rapper: Aber ich habe das noch nie gemacht.

Makeda: Just give it a go! Just imagine, I'm 'haben' and you're the past participle. Go on! Now bodywave your way over to the end, just like the past participle. Push off, then dive down. That's it. Du hast es gemacht! Du hast es perfekt gemacht!

Rapper: A perfect wave for a perfect tense.