Regular verbs can have long or short vowels. Recall, from the chapter about spelling and pronunciation (see rules for keeping vowels long/short):
long vowel infinitives require long vowel stems
Take, for example, maken (to make).
Following the rule for deriving the crude stem from the infinitive (stem = infinitive minus -en ), we would get:
mak
This is a short vowel (a single, closed vowel).
To keep it long, we need to add an extra a. The stem then becomes:
maak.
Examples of similar verbs are:
| infinitive
| english
| crude stem
| stem
|
| nemen
| to take
| nem
| neem
|
| lopen
| to walk
| lop
| loop
|
| leren
| to learn
| ler
| leer
|
| koken
| to cook
| kok
| kook
|
| breken
| to break
| brek
| breek
|
| vuren
| to shoot
| vur
| vuur
|
| horen
| to hear
| hor
| hoor
|
| weten
| to know
| wet
| weet
|
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