Dutch Verbs -To Be (Zijn )


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Introductions

We’ll start by teaching you how to introduce yourself in Dutch. Take a look at the following Dutch sentence and it’s English translation.

Here we see your very first Dutch sentence where you introduce yourself as Aiden, a fictional person. You should of course replace the name with your own name. Although the sentence consists of only three words we are going to carefully examine each word.

The first word “Ik” is the Dutch equivalent of the English word “I”, also referred to as 1st person singular. It’s a subject pronoun. The second word “ben” is a verb. It’s a conjugation of the irregular Dutch verb “zijn”, which is the Dutch equivalent of “to be”. Now we’ve seen how to introduce yourself using “ik ben” but we can also introduce other people, take a look at the following examples:

 Ik ben Aiden  I am Aiden
 Jij bent Aiden  You are Aiden
 Hij is Aiden  He is Aiden
 Zij is Caroline  She is Caroline
 Het is Aiden  It is Aiden
 Wij zijn Aiden en Elias  We are Aiden and Elias
 Jullie zijn Aiden en Elias  You are Aiden and Elias
 Zij zijn Aiden en Elias  They are Aiden and Elias

Thats alot of new words, but it’s all very easy. Now that you’ve seen all subject pronouns in Dutch, you know how to refer to people. And besides that, you’ve also learned your first Dutch verb, an irregular verb: “Zijn”, in English “To be”. There is also a small new word that appeared in this lesson, the Dutch words “en”, which means “and”.

It’s also a good exercise to try to pronounce every Dutch sentence you see on this page, and when you’re uncertain of how to pronounce a certain character or group of characters then go to the pronunciation page.

Summary

In this lesson you’ve learned two aspects of Dutch grammar, you’ve learned the subject pronouns and you’ve learned the full conjugation of the irregular Dutch verb “zijn”.

Vocabulary

We’ll ask you to study a number of words in each lesson , this time we’ll give you a couple of very easy words to study. Learn them in both directions! English-Dutch and Dutch-English.

Vocabulary

 vader  father
 moeder  mother
 oma  grandmother
 opa  grandfather

Exercises

Each lesson will come with some exercises so you can practice the grammar and vocabulary of this lesson.

Exercise A: Translate to English:

  1. Ik ben
  2. Jij bent
  3. Hij/zij/het is
  4. Wij zijn
  5. Jullie zijn
  6. Zij zijn

 

Solutions

After you’ve done the exercises you can check whether your answer is correct using the following solutions:

Solution of Exercise A:

  1. Ik ben (I am)
  2. Jij bent (You are – informal)
  3. Hij/zij/het is (He/she/it is)
  4. Wij zijn (We are)
  5. Jullie zijn (You are – plural)
  6. Zij zijn (They are

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Present Past Future
Ik
I
ben was zal
zijn
Jij/U
You
bent was zal
zijn
Hij/Zij/Het
He/She/It
is was zal
zijn
Wij/Jullie/Zij
We/You/They
zijn waren zullen
zijn

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