| Language notes | | das Betriebsklima war gut |
| | Das Betriebsklima war gut.
The company atmosphere was good.
Wir waren alle von der näheren Umgebung.
We all came (lit. were) from the surrounding area.
Wir kannten einander.
We knew each other.
Wir hatten jedes Jahr einen Betriebsausflug.
Every year we went on (lit. had) a company outing.
Wir hatten Weihnachtsfeiern.
We had a Christmas do.
Sie hatten früher rund zweieinhalbtausend Mitarbeitern hier.
You used to have two and a half thousand workers here.
When you want to talk about how things were or used to be in the past but no longer are, ie the state of things in the past, you need the Imperfekt tense as shown in the examples above.
Note that:
in Southern Germany, German speaking Switzerland and Austria there is a tendency to use the Perfekt tense for all past actions, whether they describe events in the past or the state of things in the past, rather than the Imperfekt tense.
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