Verbs – perfect (regular)

For the perfect tense, you need to make a past participle (ge-form). You do that like this:

• take the present tense ik-form and add ge-to it,
• place a -t at the end when the ik-form ends on one of the consonants in kofschiptaxi and add -d when it doesn’t.

So for fietsen it will be ik heb gefietst, and for rennen it will be ik heb gerend.

Three remarks on that:

1. To choose by listening between -t and -d for a past participle, in fact you could listen if the past gets -te(n) or -de(n), which is easier to hear: the difference between just -d or -t at the end,as in past participles, is not heard in Dutch (they’re both pronounced as t).
2. The past participles of verbs that have an infinitive form starting with ge-, be-, ve-, re-, or ont- do not get ge-. So for betalen (to pay) it will be ik heb betaald and not gebetaald.
3. For the perfect tense you mostly use hebben, like you use ‘to have’ in English. But there are – a bit more than in English – verbs or situations where you use zijn (tobe). For example when you use a verb that means ‘to go somewhere’ and a direction is indicated. So it would be ik heb in het park gefietst (I have been cycling in thepark – no direction) but ik ben naar het station gefietst (I have cycled to the station – clear direction).