Verbs – general

Dutch verbs can, like the English ones, be divided into regular and irregular verbs (for experts: to keep it simple,I’m skipping the weak/strong division). I’ll give you the regularities and than the irregularities for each tense. But before that, something about the used tenses. Speaking Dutch, you’ll basically need four of them:

present tense         - onvoltooid tegenwoordige tijd(ott)
past tense            - onvoltooid verleden tijd(vtt)
present perfect tense - voltooid tegenwoordige tijd(ovt)
past perfect tense    - voltooid verleden tijd(vvt)

 

Please note that the first two are used in much more cases than in English. When you’re a beginner you could restrict yourself for quite a while to using only those. You could for example just use ‘ik zie haar’ in situations where you would use the English (more specific) phrases:

– I see her
– I am seeing her
– I will be seeing her
– I’m going to see her