With respect to past tense, a "common" thing in english appears to be that the imperfect of a verb is the same word as the past particilpe of that verb. So "played" can be the imperfect tense itself, or the participle of perfect tense in "have played".
In German, this doesn't happen. Imperfect tense is often formed by using a "-te" ending to the verb (so "spiel(en)" -> "spielte"), while the past participle prepends "ge-" and appends "t" or "en" (so "gespielt" - (I have) "played"). The form "... was playing" would also exist, "... war spielen", and again with a difference how the infinitive is formed (-ing vs. -en).
To me, grammar of temporal forms in English is more Romance-language than German language. The fact that English lost any form of case, and most of gender, is neither German nor Romance though.
I sometimes used to joke with English friends that the language is the least common denominator of all the people overrunning the Island in the last 3000 years. Use a bit of everything, leave all the hard stuff out, and write it in a nonphonetic way like Irish.
German does not have this feature! In German, there is no difference in meaning between "Ich spielte Tennis" and "Ich habe Tennis gespielt". (The difference is in register, "Ich spielte Tennis" is more formal.)
In English, in contrast, there is a clear difference in usage between, say, "I was playing tennis while my kids were in school", and "I have played tennis while my kids were in school".
(forgot to say, German would know "Ich war Tennis spielen ..." as much as "Ich habe Tennis gespielt ..."; the first one would be considered imperfect passive, and yes I would agree perfect passive, "Ich bin Tennis spielen gewesen ..." would be unusual to say. The english form, "I have been playing tennis ..." is common though. As is "I have played tennis", and yes I'd agree the two aren't interchangeable)
I defer to you for that, simply because I'm a native speaker of German and "only" long-term fluid in English. I don't entirely grasp the difference between the two - other than "phrasing" (and on that level it exists in both), and would be likely to use them interchangeably. In both German and English.
In German, this doesn't happen. Imperfect tense is often formed by using a "-te" ending to the verb (so "spiel(en)" -> "spielte"), while the past participle prepends "ge-" and appends "t" or "en" (so "gespielt" - (I have) "played"). The form "... was playing" would also exist, "... war spielen", and again with a difference how the infinitive is formed (-ing vs. -en).
To me, grammar of temporal forms in English is more Romance-language than German language. The fact that English lost any form of case, and most of gender, is neither German nor Romance though.
I sometimes used to joke with English friends that the language is the least common denominator of all the people overrunning the Island in the last 3000 years. Use a bit of everything, leave all the hard stuff out, and write it in a nonphonetic way like Irish.