Why should I learn this topic?
Sein verbs are used constantly throughout the German language, being able to identify such sein verbs allows one to form them in the perfect tense, thus facilitating the ability to describe events that happened in the past while being grammatically correct.
Where should I start?
Firstly, one needs to know that sein is an auxilary verb, these are also often referred to as helping verbs. These helping verbs are used to form the perfect tense, this is the tense that is used to describe the past, especially in spoken German. There are two helping verbs for forming the perfect tense, sein and haben.
How do I know which one to use and when?
haben is used for transitive verbs while sein is used for intransitive ones.
What does that mean exactly?
It means that whenever there is a movement, from A to B involved, one must use sein. Naturally, this is somewhat subjective therefore some situations where you might believe a movement from A to B is occurring, might not use sein, however these should be few and far between.
List some examples!
For instance, if I wanted to say in German “I walked to the shop.”, then walking involves a movement thus one must use sein.
Ich bin zum Laden gegangen = I walked to the shop
Ich bin nach Hause gegangen = I walked home
Ich bin über das Seil gesprungen = I jumped over the rope
Ich bin umgefallen = I fell over
Note the word “bin”, this is the form of sein which is attributed to ich, if one were to change the subject from Ich, to Du — the verb bin would change accordingly (bist). At the bottom of this blog there will be a table with the conjugations for sein and haben, you could then put it into flashcards if you do not feel comfortable in your ability to recall the conjugations of sein and haben.
When else do we use sein?
While we use sein for when there is movement (from A to B), we also use it when there is a change of state occurring. For instance, the verb sterben (to die) indicates a change from living, to dying. You should not worry if it all seems too much of a grey area, there is a list of which most common verbs are classified as sein in which can be put into a flashcard set to learn.
The final usage of sein is known as the category “Other”, these are just exceptions which you can also put into a flashcard set to learn since unlike haben, sein verbs are fairly rare, meaning should you be in doubt, and there is no movement taking place, you can be safe in your knowledge to use haben.
Tell me about haben!
haben is the other auxillary (helping verb) one needs to know to form the perfect tense which describes the past in spoken German.
Just like with sein, haben is conjugated to the subject of the sentence.
While you could try to put every single verb which takes haben into a flashcard set, it is much easier to do so for sein and then assume all other verbs take haben.
Almost there..
What else do I need to know?
You now know that to form the past tense in spoken German, one needs to use the perfect tense — this perfect tense requires an auxilary verb, haben or sein depending on if there is a change of state, movement or OTHER?!?.
You now need to know what happens to the verb which takes either sein or haben.
This verb is treated similar to a modal verb, in which it becomes positioned at the end of the sentence. Let’s take the verb gehen for instance.
Present Tense: Ich gehe nach Hause = I am going home
Perfect Tense: Ich bin nach Hause gegangen = I went home
It is clear that in the perfect tense, the verb was moved to the end, as with the introduction of the helping verb in the 2nd position, there is no need for a verb there. This is always the case, the verb goes to the end of the sentence.
You may also notice that the verb has changed from gehen to gangen and a ge- is added before the verb. With regards to the ge- this is common place and helps signal that the verb is in the perfect tense, gehen also undertakes a significant change to gangen for the same reason. There are technical reasons as to why certain types of verbs change but this is not ideal to learn since you will always have to think about several different grammar rules before speaking which will set you back in achieving grades which do not accommodate hesitation when speaking; just know that the ending is either -en, or -t (bin gekommen, bin gefolgt) <kommen, folgen>.
What do you suggest then?
I suggest that you learn the verb pairings on a case by case basis and as you learn more and more pairings, you will gain a feel of whether machen is gemachen or gemacht for instance, (gemachen sounds SO wrong to me, and it will to you too as you develop your German ear). Following these steps is what I did, but feel free to change and alter any aspect you disagree with, note that the usage of the sites that I will recommend should be used at your discretion.
Step 1:
Visit a quiz creation site, ideally a free one such as Quizlet and input the verb as the term, and its meaning as the definition or vice-versa whichever way you want to learn it. Do this for all sein verbs and ONLY sein verbs.
Step 2:
After you know that gehen means to go for instance. Then make another flashcard set with the verb in the present against the verb in the perfect tense. For instance the term would be gehen and the definition gegangen.
Now you know both what the terms mean, and how to use them in the past. You also know that every verb in that set exclusively takes sein, thus any other verb that you come across that you are unsure of most likely takes haben.
How do I learn the perfect forms of verbs which take haben?
For these you can take a similar approach with flashcards but merely tailor it to your knowledge level, therefore if you are trying to learn A1, learn all A1 verbs and put them in a flashcard set; here you will have both verbs haben and sein in one set but should not be an issue if you have learned the sein verbs already. You could even cross reference various online sources which contain A1 Verbs that you should know to ensure that none of them slip through the cracks. Naturally if you are studying at A2 you can do this for A2 and A1, or if you already know the A1 verbs, then only A2 :).
That everything, see below the conjugation table for haben and sein which I promised earlier, and remember to use the knowledge that you have learned in real world cases, for instance, think of a basic sentence in English that is in the past that you use often and try to write it in German, you can use the likes of DeepL Translate to verify that your answer is correct :).
Sein Conjugation (Perfect Tense)
Haben Conjugation (Perfect Tense)
Sein Verb List: 70 Sein Verbs To Put Into Flashcards!
https://deutsch.lingolia.com/en/grammar/verbs/sein-haben/70-common-verbs-with-sein
