Breakdown of Das Baby hat gerade geweint.
haben
to have
das Baby
the baby
gerade
just / just now
weinen
to cry
Questions & Answers about Das Baby hat gerade geweint.
How did we make the word for "cried" (geweint)?
geweint is the past participle of the regular verb weinen (to cry). To make this form for a regular verb, you take the stem (wein), add ge- to the beginning, and -t to the end: ge-wein-t.
Why does the German sentence say "has cried" (hat... geweint) instead of just "cried"?
In spoken German, the most common way to talk about the past is using the Perfekt tense. It is built using a helper verb (like hat, meaning "has") and a past participle (geweint). Even though English often uses the simple past ("cried"), German speakers naturally use the Perfekt (hat geweint) for everyday past events.
Why is geweint at the very end of the sentence?
In German, when you have a helper verb (like hat) and a main action verb (like geweint), the helper verb takes the normal second position in the sentence, and the main action gets pushed to the very end. This is a strict rule in German word order!
Does gerade always mean "just"?
Not always! gerade can also mean "straight" (like walking in a straight line). But when talking about time, it means "just," "just now," or "at this very moment." Here, it tells us the crying happened very recently.