Dutch Grammar :: verbs :: regular verbs

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Regular verbs

English version by Bieneke Berendsen :: other languages

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:

Singular person			Plural person
1st:	I	ik	1st:	we	we
2nd:	you	je/u	2nd:	you	jullie
3rd:	he / she / it	hij/ze/het	3rd:	they	ze

As in English, in Dutch we have regular and in 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.

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