Unlike Portuguese, which has a more or less single “past tense” in everyday spoken language, German has two past tenses that compete with each other—the Präteritum and the Perfekt—and the choice between them isn’t about when the action took place; it’s about where you’re speaking.
Perfekt: the past tense of everyday speech
In spoken German, especially in southern Germany and in Austria/Switzerland, the Perfekt is practically the only past tense used in conversation. Ich habe gegessen (I ate), ich bin gegangen (I went) — always with the auxiliary verb (haben or sein) plus the past participle at the end of the sentence.
Präteritum: the past tense in writing and narratives
Präteritum appears mainly in written texts, news articles, books, and formal narratives — ich aß (I ate), ich ging (I went). It’s the “literary past,” equivalent to how we use certain more formal verb tenses in written Portuguese that almost no one uses when speaking.
The exception that confuses everyone
Even in speech, the verbs sein, haben, and the modals (können, müssen, wollen...) tend to use Präteritum even in conversation: ich war (I was) is much more common than ich bin gewesen, even informally. This exception is one of the things that most confuses people who have studied the “general” rule without knowing about this caveat.
Why does this matter in practice?
If you’re learning to converse, focus your energy on Perfekt—that’s what you’ll use 90% of the time when speaking. Save Präteritum for when you’re reading news, books, or stories in German (which, by the way, is a great reason to practice reading with narrated stories).
Listen to Perfekt in real conversational contexts
DeutschBloom’s bilingual dialogs and podcasts use everyday spoken German—the Perfekt you’ll actually need.
Listen to stories in GermanRelated articles
Stop translating every sentence in your head
Every day without practice is another day memorizing loose rules instead of actually speaking. On DeutschBloom you train with real verbs and sentences, hearing native pronunciation — feel the difference in the first week.