Pronouns in Dutch

 

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In Lesson One we learned about personal pronouns, we can remember the following list:

Ik	I
Jij	You
U	You (formal)
Hij	He
Zij	She
Wij	We
Jullie	You (plural)
Zij	They

Note that all of these pronouns appear in the subject position of the sentence:

Ik zie de man

I see the man

We all know that personal pronouns have a different form when they are in the object position of the sentence. The object is the part of the sentence that is undergoing the action of the verb while the subject is the one initiating the action of the verb. If we would simply move a personal pronoun from subject position to object position, then we would get a wrong sentence, as the following example illustrates:

*I see he

Because “he” appears in object position in this case, we have to change it’s form to “him”. Likewise “we” changes to “us”, etc.. The same principle applies to Dutch. We can construct the following table for Dutch object pronouns:

Mij	Me
Jou	You
U	You (formal)
Hem	Him
Haar	Her
Ons	Us
Jullie	You (plural)
Hen	Them

So the example sentence would translate as follows:

I see him

Ik zie hem

So you get the idea: in object positions you have to use the object pronoun because otherwise you will get an ill-formed sentence, just like in English.

We can distinguish another grammaticality. Pronouns can appear in, the so-called indirect object. An indirect object is the receiver of the action. Consider the following:

I give the man a present

Ik geef de man een kado

You will note that de man is obviously the receiver in this example, and therefore it is the indirect object. Like there are direct object pronouns, which we’ve just seen, there are also indirect object pronouns. Fortunately, there happens to be no difference between the two in Dutch, so we see the same table for indirect object pronouns:

Mij	Me
Jou	You
U	You (formal)
Hem	Him
Haar	Her
Ons	Us
Jullie	You (plural)
Hen	Them

And thus we can replace “de man” with an indirect object pronoun, obtaining the following result:

I give him a present

Ik geef hem een kado

We can even construct double pronouns now:

I give the man a woman	Ik geef de man een vrouw
I give him a woman	Ik geef hem een vrouw
I give him her	Ik geef hem haar

Like in English, the indirect object pronoun comes first in this case and is followed by the direct object pronoun.

We have cleverly omitted the neutral pronoun in our discussion, but we will need to bring it into the picture as well because it is often used. The neutral pronoun in Dutch, the equivalent of the English pronoun “it” is “het”. This pronoun has the same form in subject, object and indirect object position, just like English. A small exception in word order occurs however when we deal with double pronouns:

I give the man a present	Ik geef de man een kado
I give him a present	Ik geef hem een kado
I give him it	Ik geef het hem

You see that in the last Dutch example, the two pronouns have swapped position, unlike in English. In English this can be done to: “I give it to him”, but that introduces an extra preposition “to”. And in Dutch the words HAVE TO are swapped, because otherwise the sentence would be incorrect.

Colloquial Use

You have to be aware of the fact that the forms we have discussed so far are often replaced with simpler versions where the ij or ou sound is replaced by a neutral e. The following forms are all equivalent:

Official	Alternative
Jij	Je
Zij	Ze
Mij	Me
Jou	Je
Wij	We

You might expect “hij” to change into “*he”, but that never happens and it would produce an incorrect sentence. Below are some sentences that are all exactly the same in meaning:

Ik zie jou	Ik zie je
Jij ziet mij	Je ziet me
Jij ziet mij	Je ziet mij
Jij ziet mij	Jij ziet me
Zij zien jou	Ze zien je

Using the formal ij or ou form has a highlighting result. You stress explicitly the pronoun and make it more obviously present. In daily speech, you will find the colloquial form more often.

Vocabulary

Geven	To give
Het kado	The present

Exercises

Note that we will mainly use the colloquial pronoun forms from now on.

Exercise A: Translate to English
1) Ik geef de aardige man een groot kado.
2) Hij geeft mij een nieuwe fiets.
3) Wij zien hen goed.
4) Wat wil ze?
5) Waarom lopen ze snel?
6) U ziet haar niet.
7) We geven het hen.
8) Ze zien het niet.
9) Het is goed.

Exercise B: Translate to Dutch
1) I see her.
2) Her dog sees me well.
3) You give me a present.
4) They see it.
5) What does she give him?
6) Why don’t you see it?
7) They give me her.

Solutions

In this lesson, we will list both the official pronoun forms as well as the colloquial ones, In next lessons we will only list one of them.

Solutions to Exercise A
1) I give the nice man a big present.
2) He gives me a new bike.
3) We see them well.
4) What does she want?
5) Why do they walk fast?
6) You don’t see her.
7) We give it to them.
8) They don’t see it.
9) It is good.

Solutions to Exercise B
1) Ik zie haar.
2) Haar hond ziet mij/me goed.
3) Je eeft mij/me een kado.
4) Zij/Ze zien het.
5) Wat geeft zij/ze hem?
6) Waarom zie jij/je het niet?
7) Ze geven mij/me haar.

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