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Partly irregular verbs
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English version by Bieneke Berendsen :: other languages
By far most Dutch irregular verbs are only partly irregular. The present is perfectly regular but they have an irregular Internal link simple past and Internal link past participle. You can view the conjugations of these verbs in the long Internal link list of irregular verbs.

The conjugations in the present tense (e.g. we work) are regular, so all rules mentioned in the section about the Internal link present tense, apply here.

Only three verb forms to learn

To learn the irregular verb conjugations, you need to learn:
  1. the past participle
  2. the singular simple past
  3. the plural simple past
In Dutch, the past tense only has two forms, one for the singular and one for the plural. For example:

simple past
singular
plural
ik begreep I / you / he
understood 		we begrepen we / you / they
understood
je begreep jullie begrepen
hij begreep ze begrepen
past participle: begrepen auxiliary verb for pp: hebben

The only verbs we need to learn are the ones that are marked red. Apart from that, it is also wise to learn the past participles that take 'zijn' by heart. By far most past participles use 'hebben', several can use both (depending on the context) and some only take 'zijn'. See also Internal link zijn, hebben and the past participle. In the Internal link list of irregular verbs, these verbs are marked with an asterisk (*).

Irregular verb groups

Among the regular verbs, we can discern certain patterns. In English, for example, there is a group of verbs with an i-a-u pattern: 'to sing - sang - sung', 'to ring - rang - run', and a group with an i-ou-ou pattern: 'to find - found - found', 'to bind - bound - bound'. And there are many more such patterns in English irregular verbs. In Dutch, we find the same phenomenon.

Note that the examples above give you the unstressed Internal link personal pronouns. Some pronouns change when they are stressed in a phrase: je/jij, we/wij, ze/zij (both singular and plural).
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