Hi Lara, I still get confused by this too, but one thing I try to do is ask myself a question while studying a new verb. "What?" For example: I went to the store.( Mein dukan gayi/a) Vs. I ate a sandwhich. (Mein ne sandwhich khaya) In the first sentence if you ask "I went...what? It doesn't make sense because the subject isn't acting on anything. You went to a *place*. In the second example you are acting on something. "I ate....what? (A sandwich). Like I said, this is still tricky for me too, but I thought I'd share in case it helped. Best of luck! -Ashley

ने(new) - Nominative case (karta karak) - doer of the action Easy trick - you can look at ने like passive voice 'done by me'. Meaning - you already did that thing in the past and you are telling someone about it. It is another form of 'by'(द्वारा) e.g. This work is done by me = Mera dwara yeh kaam kiya gaya - or simply using 'ne'(ने) - maine yeh kaam kiya. You already did it in the past and you are telling someone about it. Try to convert the sentences in your head and see if it works.

Well, this is the only rule for This tense and the only thing you can do is just practice with a native speaker. Practicing a lot will make your mind to react on them automatically without in a short time.

Hi Lara, Before you start leaning any language you must ask yourself these important questions: In what way the language I am going to learn is different from my native language. ex: Hindi is derived from Sanskrit and uses most of its grammatical constructions. I am learning Russian and I find so much compatibility between the two in terms of "cases". Verbs, nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives these all inflect with respect to tense, gender and voice. Coming to your question of "ne". It has nothing to do with past tense. “Ne" is a nominative suffix added when the action is in active voice. I know how difficult and complex it gets when you start reasoning about grammar rules, but that is the beauty of language.Is n't it?