Strictly speaking, we only have two tenses: The present and the past. We do, however, define a few 'semi-tenses' by an interaction of tense (present or past), aspect (momentary or ongoing), and mood (is it a factual or a hypothetical statement?).
This gives us a list of eight basic 'tenses'.
| 1. present
| ik werk
| I work
|
| 2. simple past
| ik werkte
| I worked
|
| 3. perfect
| ik heb gewerkt
| I have worked
|
| 4. pluperfect
| ik had gewerkt
| I had worked
|
| 5. future
| ik zal werken
| I will work
|
| 6. conditional
| ik zou werken
| I would work
|
| 7. future perfect
| ik zal hebben gewerkt
| I will have worked
|
| 8. conditional perfect
| ik zou hebben gewerkt
| I would have worked
|
For each tense, you will have to learn two things:
1. Its conjugation (I work, he works, etc.)
2. Its application: When do we use the tense?
Another common 'tense' -not mentioned here- is the continuous (or 'progressive'): ik ben aan het lopen (I am walking). This will be discussed in the next chapter, under aan het continuous and te continuous.
The personal pronouns are:
| 1st singular
| I
| ik
|
| 2nd singular
| you
| je/u
|
| 3rd singular
| he/she/it
| hij/ze/het
|
| 1st plural
| we
| we
|
| 2nd plural
| you
| jullie
|
| 3rd plural
| they
| ze
|
As in English, in Dutch we have regular and irregular verbs.
Regular verbs all follow the same conjugation. To conjugate a regular verb, we need to know the stem. Therefore, before we move on to the actual conjugation of a verb, we need to know how to derive the stem from an infinitive.
Questions? 
