Regardless of how good you are at speaking german this hub is designed for you to learn and understand simple past verbs. In german there are a lot of fancy words to describe verbs but the simple past is simple (excuse the pun) to understand. It really is a basic way to say something that has happened without the use of a past participle like habe.

Eg. Ich habe Tennis gespielt.

Instead you could simply say

Ich spielte Tennis.

This seems much easier.

However, as german goes there are three types of simple past verbs. Weak, Strong and Mixed. Weak verbs all follow a simple pattern (i will discuss soon) and strong verbs have another pattern while Mixed verbs, you guessed it, are a mix of both.

Weak Verbs: Weak verbs do not have a vowel change in the stem in past tenses. However, there is a small change to the stem of the verb which is how you can tell that it is a simple past verb. This change is simply add the letter -t to the stem then add these other endings.

Eg. ich spielte, du spieltest, er/sie/es spielte, wir spielten, ihr spieltet, sie/Sie spielten

However, some weak verbs require and extra -e- to help with pronunciation. This is usually required after verbs which end in -t or -d. Arbeiten goes to arbeitete

Eg. ich badete, du badetest, er/sie/es badete, wir badeten, ihr badetet, sie/Sie badeten

** Notice how ich and er/sie/es remain the same.

Strong Verbs: Strong verbs are a bit harder to explain, there is no really clear pattern that you can follow so you usually have to use some good deduction to determine whether a verb is a strong verb or not. In the simple past strong verbs do not have an added stem change rather the vowel changes.

Eg. beginnen changes to begann.

Further example.

singen: ich sang, du sangst, er/sie/es sang, wir sangen, ihr sangt,sie/Sie sangen.

Since there is no pattern I will give a quick guide but there is some overlap between changes so beware.

e or ie to a.

e, ie or ü to o

ei to i or ie

e or u or o to a

a to u

Mixed Verbs:  Like strong verbs, the vowel in a mixed verb will change. They also have their endings changed to that of weak verbs.

Eg brennen is a mixed verb

ich brannte etc

Here is a list of most of the mixed verbs that you will need to know.

brennen - brannte -to burn

bringen - brachte - to bring

denken - dachte - to think

kennen - kannte - to know

nennen - nannte - to name

rennen - rannte - to run

senden - sandte - to send

wenden - wandte - to turn

wissen - wusste - to know

With some practise you should be able to get the simple past under your belt quite quickly :)