Empfahl

Empfahl is the simple past tense (Präteritum) of the German verb empfehlen, which means to recommend. It is used to describe a past act of making a recommendation. For example: Die Jury empfahl dem Team diese Strategie. In everyday speech, the Perfekt form with haben is more common for past actions: Das hat sie empfohlen.

As a transitive verb, empfehlen takes a direct object representing what is being recommended and often a recipient in the dative case, e.g., ich empfahl dir das Buch. The simple past forms of empfehlen include ich empfahl, er empfahl, wir empfahlen, sie empfahlen. The form empfahl occurs in sentences referring to past recommendations. The participle form is empfohlen, used with auxiliary haben to form the perfect tense.

Usage notes and variants: empfahl appears primarily in narrative or formal writing to recount past events. In modern spoken German, speakers typically prefer the Perfekt: ich habe empfohlen, du hast empfohlen, er hat empfohlen. The word is a verb and is not capitalized unless it begins a sentence.

Relation to related terms: empfehlen (to recommend) is the base verb; empfehlung (recommendation) is the corresponding noun form. The Präteritum form empfahl is distinct from other tenses but shares the same semantic core of advising or advocating a choice in the past.