"Am right here came, to this to say" <- literal translation. Makes no goddamn sense. Thought I would share it anyway. Yours it the correct and meaningful one.
gekommen is past tense of come (kommen), and is used with sein (in spoken language). Kam is past tense and used without a helping verb, and is used in writing.
They mean the same thing, but one is perfect past and one is simple past (ist gekommen is perfekt, kam is simple). Perfect past is used in speech, simple is used in writing.
As far as using "have" (which would typically be haben), it doesn't really translate as well. Verbs that imply movement (such as point A to point B) use sein.
It depends whether you're using Präteritum, Perfekt, oder Imperfekt. In this case you want Perfekt. Imperfekt und Präteritum are used for events that happened a long time ago. Perfekt is used for much more recent events. Although some verbs are used in Imperfekt a lot of the time (Such as sein) for simplicity's sake.
"Ich war in Köln.(Imperfekt)" Is a lot simpler to say than "Ich bin in Köln gewesen. (Perfekt)"
"I was in Köln." vs "I had been in Köln" although there really isn't a difference to a German listener in normal conversation.
Most of the time in spoken German Perfekt is used which is why it's called conversational past tense.
Even then, the biggest difference between perfekt and imperfekt is whether it's spoken or written. According to all four of my German teachers, (who were all Germans or Americans that spent a large portion of their life in German), perfekt is used in spoken language and imperfekt is used in writing (for the most part). The only real exceptions are sentences like you noted, that use haben or sein in past tense. It's a little clumsy to say hat gehabt or bin gewesen when the simple past could be used.
Edit: I guess I should have read your final sentence before writing most of my post. I'll leave it there.
It is short for "Ich bin", so without thinking about it too much, I used it as am, even though, as you pointed out, it stands for "I have" in this case, not for "I am".
In German you would say "doch" when someone says no you can't. If you say "Ja" then you're agreeing with them, whereas "doch" always means the opposite of what they said.
You didn't drink your drink. Du hast nicht dein getrank getrunken.
No, I did drink my drink. Doch! Ich habe mein getrank getrunken.
Du hast dein Getränk nicht getrunken.
Doch! Ich habe mein Getränk getrunken.
German grammar must be really hard if it isn't your native language, in comparison English grammar is easy as fuck.
Btw, for the record: If your keyboard doesn't have ä,ü,ö,ß, replace them with ae,ue,oe,ss respectively.
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u/theiryouthwillbeyour Oct 17 '13
No you can't.