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Our knowledge of Dutch is already improving gradually! It is time we now move on from present tense and discuss other verb tenses as well. We will start with the past tense:
Past tense
Dutch past tense of regular verbs comes in three groups: Strong verbs, Weak verbs with T, Weak verbs with D. The strong verbs have an irregular stem in the past tense, but are conjugated regularly, the only issue is remembering the correct stem.
Weak verbs are completely regular and come in two flavors: a T-flavor and a D-flavor. The flavor it takes depends on the final consonant of the verb’s stem.
If the final consonant is one appearing in the mnemonic word ‘T KOFSCHIP then it belongs to the T-group, otherwise it belongs to the D-group, provided that is isn’t a strong or irregular verb. Can you still follow it? Let’s start conjugating each of the three groups as an example:
Strong verb conjugation
| LOPEN (liep) | TO WALK |
| Ik liep | I walked |
| Jij liep | You walked |
| Hij/zij liep | He/she walked |
| Wij liepen | We walked |
| Jullie liepen | You walked |
| Zij liepen | They walked |
Above you see the past tense conjugation of the strong verb “lopen”. Since the verb is strong it has an irregular stem in the past tense: “liep”. You see that the rest of the conjugation is quite straightforward and there are in fact only two different forms.
It is important that when you learn a strong verb, you memorize it’s stem in past tense, just like you do for English verbs like “bite – bit – bit”. Now let’s take a look at the weak verbs. The two left columns show a T-group weak verb (since it’s final consonant is one of ‘T KOFSCHIP). The two right columns show a D-group weak verb:
| HOPEN | TO HOPE | DELEN | TO SHARE |
| Ik hoopte | I hoped | Ik deelde | I shared |
| Jij hoopte | You hoped | Jij deelde | You shared |
| Hij/zij hoopte | He/she hoped | Hij/zij deelde | He/she shared |
| Wij hoopten | We hoped | Wij deelden | We shared |
| Jullie hoopten | You hoped | Jullie deelden | You shared |
| Zij hoopten | They hoped | Zij deelden | They shared |
You notice the similarities in conjugation between the two types of weak verbs, one uses a T, and one uses a D. That’s all there’s to it, and with ‘T KOFSCHIP you have an easy mnemonic tool for determining whether a verb uses the T or the D form, provided of course that you can rule out that it is a strong verb. There are no tricks for knowing that, so that will have to be memorized.
Now things will get even more confusing: you probably just grabbed the concept of when the double consonants and vowels and when to make them single again; it all has to do with retaining the sound of the vowel. However, when it comes to strong verbs, this principle is set aside partially. When a past verb stem contains a short vowel, then it is no problem if this short vowel gets replaced by a long one for the plural forms. Consider the following example of a strong verb:
| SPREKEN (sprak) | TO SPEAK |
| Ik sprak | I spoke |
| Jij sprak | You spoke |
| Hij/zij sprak | He/she spoke |
| Wij spraken | We spoke |
| Jullie spraken | You spoke |
| Zij spraken | They spoke |
Notice that because of the Dutch pronunciation rules, the A-vowel in “sprak” sounds different than the A-vowel in “spraken”.
But also note that although you are used to compensating this by adding a consonant, this is not done when conjugating strong verbs in the past tense.
However, the other way round still applies, if the vowel in the stem is a long one, then it has to remain long even after addition of -EN.
Below we will quickly show how to conjugate some irregular and strong verbs we have seen in past lessons. The irregular verbs are fully conjugated. For the strong verbs we only mention the stem, since you can do the rest yourself with what you have learned in this lesson.
| Zijn: Ik was, jij was, hij was, wij waren, jullie waren, zij waren |
| Hebben: ik had, jij had, hij had, wij hadden, jullie hadden, zij hadden |
| Weten: wist |
| Zien: zag |
| Zeggen: Ik zei, jij zei, hij zei, wij zeiden, jullie zeiden, zij zeiden |
| Doen: deed |
| Spreken: sprak |
| Lopen: liep |
| Kijken: keek |
| Vliegen: vloog |
| Zwemmen: zwom |
| Komen: kwam |
| Geven: gaf |
Perfect Tense
Like in English, this is not the only kind of past tense the Dutch language knows. There is also the perfect tense (which in turn comes in two different forms).
Your head might be spinning right now, but don’t worry about it because perfect tense in Dutch is very similar to perfect tense in English. Let’s first refresh your memory by showing what perfect tense is, we will show both forms, present perfect and past perfect and illustrate this with the example verb “to speak”.
| Present Perfect | Past Perfect |
| I have spoken | I had spoken |
| You have spoken | You had spoken |
| He/she has spoken | He/she had spoken |
| We have spoken | We had spoken |
| You have spoken | You had spoken |
| They have spoken | They had spoken |
You see that perfect tense is composed of a form of the verb “to have” + the so-called participle of the verb in question, in this case the participle is: “spoken”, which is an irregular verb. For regular verbs, the participle looks just like the past tense, for example: “hoped”.
In Dutch the participle of strong verbs is again, irregular. Most Dutch participles start with the prefix “ge-“. Participles of weak verbs are formed like this:
For D-group verbs:: GE- + PRESENT-TENSE-STEM + D
For T-group verbs:: GE- + PRESENT-TENSE-STEM + T
So the participles of the two weak verbs we have discussed will be “gehoopt” and “gedeeld”, since the present-tense stem of “hopen” is “hoop”, and that of “delen” is “deel”. The participle of the strong verb is, as we already explained, irregular. In the case of our example it would be: “gelopen”.
The Dutch present perfect and past perfect is composed exactly the same as in English. It consist of a form of the verb “hebben”, and a participle. For our three example verbs we can construct the following scheme for the present perfect:
| HOPEN | DELEN | LOPEN |
| Ik heb gehoopt | Ik heb gedeeld | Ik heb gelopen |
| Jij hebt gehoopt | Jij hebt gedeeld | Jij hebt gelopen |
| Hij/zij heeft gehoopt | Hij/zij heeft gedeeld | Hij/zij heeft gelopen |
| Wij hebben gehoopt | Wij hebben gedeeld | Wij hebben gelopen |
| Jullie hebben gehoopt | Jullie hebben gedeeld | Jullie hebben gelopen |
| Zij hebben gehoopt | Zij hebben gedeeld | Zij hebben gelopen |
The past perfect tense is almost the same. The only difference is that the auxiliary verb “hebben” is conjugated in the past tense, just like in English (“have” vs “had”). Consider the following table:
| HOPEN | DELEN | LOPEN |
| Ik had gehoopt | Ik had gedeeld | Ik had gelopen |
| Jij had gehoopt | Jij had gedeeld | Jij had gelopen |
| Hij/zij had gehoopt | Hij/zij had gedeeld | Hij/zij had gelopen |
| Wij hadden gehoopt | Wij hadden gedeeld | Wij hadden gelopen |
| Jullie hadden gehoopt | Jullie hadden gedeeld | Jullie hadden gelopen |
| Zij hadden gehoopt | Zij hadden gedeeld | Zij hadden gelopen |
While direct object and indirect objects in English appear after the HAVE + PARTICIPLE construction, they appear between them in Dutch. The participle is often last in the sentence.
We’ve already shown you the past-tense stem for the strong verbs (which are irregular) which we’ve seen in these lessons. Now we will show you the participle of these strong verbs:
| Zijn: geweest |
| Hebben: gehad |
| Weten: geweten |
| Zien: gezien |
| Zeggen: gezegd |
| Doen: gedaan |
| Spreken: gesproken |
| Lopen: gelopen |
| Kijken: gekeken |
| Vliegen: gevlogen |
| Zwemmen: gezwommen |
| Komen: gekomen |
| Geven: gegeven |
Future tense
Now we’ve covered some quite difficult material it’s time for something easy, and fortunately Dutch future tense is just that.
In English future tense is made by “will” plus the infinitive form of the verb in question (meaning the full unconjugated form). In Dutch it is exactly the same.
Verbs are made by a form of the verb “zullen” plus the infinitive form of the verb. Strong verbs, weak verbs, D’s and T’s are all out of of the picture here. Take a look at the table below:
| Ik zal zien | I will see |
| Jij zult/zal zien | You will see |
| Hij/zij zal zien | He/she will see |
| Wij zullen zien | We will see |
| Jullie zullen zien | You will see |
| Zij zullen zien | They will see |
Note that you can say both “Jij zult zien” and Jij zal zien”. It means exactly the same.
Conditional tense
Strongly related to the future tense it the conditional tense, where instead of “will”, the past tense “would” is being used. The same applies to Dutch by using the past tense of the verb “zullen”. The following table will show this:
| Ik zou zien | I would see |
| Jij zou zien | You would see |
| Hij/zij zou zien | He/she would see |
| Wij zouden zien | We would see |
| Jullie zouden zien | You would see |
| Zij zouden zien | They would see |
Verbs with Prefixes
Before we end this lesson, we are going to have to take a closer look at the formation of participles.
We learned that we can construct a participle for a weak verb by using the prefix “ge-“, the present tense verb-stem and a final D or T. This is often the case, but not always.
There are verbs which already start with a common type of prefix. If this prefix is a meaningless one, the three most common ones being: “be-” and “ver-” and “ont-“, then the prefix “ge-” is not needed anymore.
For example, the participle of the verb “vertrouwen” (“to trust”) is “vertrouwd” and never “*gevertrouwd”. Another example: the participle of “bewaren” (“to save/to conserve”) is “bewaard” and never “*gebewaard”.
It is also possible that the verb start with a meaningful prefix derived from a preposition, such as the verb “uitstappen” (“to exit from something”).
This verb starts with the prefix “uit” which is derived from the preposition “uit”. Such verbs are quite common in Dutch and other Germanic languages.
In this case you do use the prefix “ge” to form the participle, but the prefix is inserted AFTER the already existing prefix. So in this case we will obtain the participle: “uitgestapt” instead of “*geuitstapt”
In more cases you will see that the prefix derived from a preposition can take another position not directly attached to the other part of the verb. This is already immediately obvious in the present tense conjugation of such verbs:
| Ik stap uit | I exit |
| Jij stapt uit | You exit |
| Hij/zij stapt uit | He/she exists |
| Wij stappen uit | We exit |
| Jullie stappen uit | You exit |
| Zij stappen uit | They exit |
And also in past tense, this behavior continues:
| Ik stapte uit | I exited |
| Jij stapte uit | You exited |
| Hij/zij stapte uit | He/she existed |
| Wij stapten uit | We exited |
| Jullie stapten uit | You exited |
| Zij stapten uit | They exited |
It can go even further. If the verb can take a direct object and/or and indirect object, then the prefix moves all the way over those. The following is an example with the verb “uitzoeken” (“to select”).
| Ik zoek een mooi boek uit | I select a nice book |
Well, that’s enough material for this lesson. We have discussed some very important aspects of Dutch grammar, not all easy or obvious.
Exercises
Exercise A: Translate to English
1) Ik zag de hond die jij ook had gezien.
2) Ik zal naar huis lopen tenzij ik al in het huis ben.
3) Ik hoopte dat jij het met me zou willen delen.
4) Hij liep door het huis tot hij bij de hond kwam.
5) Wij hebben de hond gezien.
6) Ik keek naar mijn vader terwijl hij liep.
7) Ik zal naar het huis kijken.
8) Hij zou komen als ik ook kom.
Exercise B: Translate to Dutch
1) I spoke with my father while we walked.
2) She had seen the man before you saw him.
3) We will come to your house.
4) I trusted him.
5) I choose/select a bike for my father.
6) They would see the house.
7) He came because he saw me.
Solutions
Solutions to Exercise A
1) I saw the dog that you saw too.
2) I will walk to the house unless I already am in the house.
3) I hoped you would share it with me.
4) He walked through the house until he came to the dog (until he reached the dog).
5) We have seen the dog.
6) I looked at my father while he walked.
7) I will look at the house.
8) He would come if he come too.
Solutions to Exercise B
1) I sprak met mijn vader terwijl we liepen.
2) Ze had de man gezien voor jij hem zag.
3) We zullen naar jouw huis komen.
4) I vertrouwde hem.
5) Ik zoek een fiets uit voor mijn vader.
6) Zij zouden het huis zien.
7) Hij kwam omdat hij me zag.
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