Berichtete

Berichtete is the simple past tense form of the German verb berichten, which means to report or recount information about something. The verb is transitive and commonly used in both written and spoken contexts to convey information about events that occurred in the past.

Morphology and forms

Berichten belongs to the weak verb class. In the Präteritum (simple past), the main forms are: ich berichtete, du berichtetest, er/sie/es berichtete, wir berichteten, ihr berichtetet, sie berichteten. The form berichtete occurs for ich and for er/sie/es in the singular, while the second-person singular is berichtetest. The auxiliary perfekt form is hat berichtet, which is more frequent in everyday speech.

Usage

Berichten is used to narrate past reporting events. It often appears with a recipient in the dative (jemandem berichten) and with a topic in combination with von or über (to report to someone about something, or to report on something). In narrative writing, Präteritum may be preferred, while spoken German tends to favor the Perfekt construction hat berichtet.

Examples

- Der Sprecher berichtete dem Publikum von den neuen Plänen. (The speaker reported to the audience about the new plans.)

- Ich berichtete dir gestern von dem Vorfall. (I told you yesterday about the incident.)

- Die Zeitung berichtete über die Ergebnisse der Wahl. (The newspaper reported on the election results.)

Nomenclature and related terms

Bericht is the noun meaning a report or article. Berichten as a verb should not be confused with Berichte as a noun form; the participle berichtend exists in other constructions, but the standalone form berichtete is strictly a finite verb form in the past tense.

See also

Bericht (noun), berichten (infinitive), Präteritum (grammatical mood and tense), Perfekt (present perfect in German).