| The Verb: The Present Tense |
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Two important forms of the verb are the infinitive and the stem. Two important forms of the verb are the infinitive and the stem. The infinitive is the form of the verb that is listed in the dictionary. In regular verbs, and more than 99% of irregular verbs. The infinitive normally ends in -en. Examples: werken 'to work', drinken 'to drink', eten 'to eat', koken 'to cook', maken 'to make', bellen 'to make a phonecall', stoppen 'to stop', geven 'to give', lezen 'to read'. Before we can say things like 'I work' or 'I’ll cook', we first need to make the stem of the verb. We make this by removing the ending -en. Examples: werk-, drink-. Mind the Dutch spelling rules. The stems of eten, koken, maken are eet-, kook-, maak-. We need to double the vowel, otherwise the pronunciation would become short. The stems of stoppen and bellen are bel- and stop-, since doubled consonants at the end of a word are not possible in Dutch. The stems of geven and lezen are geef- and lees-, since v and z can not be the last letter of a Dutch word. Present tense (regular) Once we have the stem, we can make the present tense as follows:
The plural of the present tense sounds and looks exactly like the infinitive (dictionary form): | |||||||||||||||||||
| we work = | we werken |
| you work (plural) = | jullie werken |
| they work = | ze werken |
© DutchToday 2007
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