Learn German: Wir sind zum Park gegangen.

In German, the spoken past tense (Perfekt) uses a helper verb. For most verbs, that helper is haben. However, for verbs that show a change of location or movement from one place to another, German uses sein (to be). Since we are moving to the park, we use sind.

How do we get gegangen from the verb gehen?

gegangen is the past participle of gehen (to go or walk). gehen is an irregular verb, meaning it doesn't follow the standard pattern of adding a -t at the end. Instead, it changes its stem and ends in -en, creating gegangen.

Why is it zum Park and not just zu Park?

zum is a handy short form of zu dem (to the). The preposition zu always requires the dative case. Since Park is a masculine noun (der Park), the word for "the" becomes dem in the dative case. Germans almost always combine zu and dem into zum.

The translation says "walked", but doesn't gehen mean "to go"?