The Perfekt tense is formed by combining an auxiliary verb (haben or sein) with the past participle form of the main verb.
For example, if I want to write the past tense of “essen”/“to eat”, such as in the English sentence “I ate”, I first need to know the auxiliary verb that goes with essen (which happens to be haben), and the past participle form of essen (which is gegessen).
I can then combine them with the usual verb conjugation and word order rules, as such:
Ich habe gegessen. -> I ate. / I have eaten.
Ich habe das Brot gegessen. -> I ate the bread. / I have eaten the bread.
How to determine the past participle?
Just look it up in the dictionary! There are a few general patterns you can also learn about, but a dictionary will pretty much always list the past participle somewhere near the verb itself.
When to use haben and when to use sein as the auxiliary verb?
The basic rules are:
• Transitive verbs (verbs which take an accusative object) use haben
• Intransitive verbs which describe a change of location or change of state use sein
• Other intransitive verbs use haben
This may not be a 100% reliable set of rules, so if in doubt, you can always use a dictionary to verify the correct auxiliary. Also note that there are a few regional variations.
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