These four verbs cover most of an ordinary day: you eat (eten), drink (drinken), sleep (slapen), and work (werken). Three of them are strong — they change their stem vowel in the past, exactly the way English eat → ate and drink → drank do — while werken is weak, the regular type that just adds an ending. Learning them together lets you feel the contrast directly: the strong verbs reshape the vowel, the weak verb keeps it. Master these and you have the backbone of every "what I did today" sentence.
Why three of these are strong — and the cognate clue
English speakers have a built-in advantage here. The verbs that are strong (irregular) in English are usually strong in Dutch too, because they inherited the pattern from the same Germanic ancestor. Drink → drank → drunk is strong in English; drinken → dronk → gedronken is strong in Dutch. Eat → ate → eaten matches eten → at → gegeten. Sleep → slept is a little irregular in English; slapen → sliep → geslapen is strong in Dutch. But work → worked is regular in English, and werken → werkte → gewerkt is regular (weak) in Dutch. The cognate is your first guess — and it is right far more often than not.
Eten — to eat (strong)
| Infinitive | Past (sg.) | Past (pl.) | Participle | Auxiliary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| eten | at | aten | gegeten | hebben |
| Person | Present | Simple past |
|---|---|---|
| ik | eet | at |
| jij / hij | eet | at |
| wij / jullie / zij | eten | aten |
Note the short/long vowel split in the past: ik at (short a) but wij aten (long aa). The participle is gegeten — the double ge is correct, not a typo.
's Ochtends eet ik bijna nooit, hooguit een beschuitje.
In the morning I almost never eat, at most a rusk. Present singular 'eet'.
Drinken — to drink (strong, i–o–o)
| Infinitive | Past (sg.) | Past (pl.) | Participle | Auxiliary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| drinken | dronk | dronken | gedronken | hebben |
| Person | Present | Simple past |
|---|---|---|
| ik | drink | dronk |
| jij / hij | drinkt | dronk |
| wij / jullie / zij | drinken | dronken |
This is the classic i → o → o class (like zingen → zong → gezongen). The vowel goes from i in the present to o in both the past and the participle. English does the same trip with a slightly different landing: drink → drank → drunk. Note that jij/hij add -t here (drinkt), because the stem ends in -nk, not -t.
We hebben gisteren veel te veel gedronken, ik heb nu hoofdpijn.
We drank far too much yesterday; now I have a headache. Perfect 'gedronken'.
Vroeger dronk ik elke ochtend koffie, nu drink ik thee.
I used to drink coffee every morning, now I drink tea. Past 'dronk' vs present 'drink'.
Slapen — to sleep (strong, a–ie)
| Infinitive | Past (sg.) | Past (pl.) | Participle | Auxiliary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| slapen | sliep | sliepen | geslapen | hebben |
| Person | Present | Simple past |
|---|---|---|
| ik | slaap | sliep |
| jij / hij | slaapt | sliep |
| wij / jullie / zij | slapen | sliepen |
The present stem is slaap- (long aa, written double in the closed singular: ik slaap, jij slaapt), but the plural opens up to slapen with a single a that is still long. The past vowel is ie — sliep / sliepen — the same shift you hear in English sleep → slept, just with a different vowel. The participle geslapen keeps the a.
Ik heb vannacht slecht geslapen; de buren hadden een feestje.
I slept badly last night; the neighbours were having a party. Perfect 'geslapen'.
Werken — to work (weak, the contrast)
| Infinitive | Past (sg.) | Past (pl.) | Participle | Auxiliary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| werken | werkte | werkten | gewerkt | hebben |
| Person | Present | Simple past |
|---|---|---|
| ik | werk | werkte |
| jij / hij | werkt | werkte |
| wij / jullie / zij | werken | werkten |
Here is the contrast: werken keeps its vowel everywhere. The past is built by adding -te / -ten to the stem (werk → werkte), and the participle is ge- + stem + -t → gewerkt. No vowel gymnastics. The -te (not -de) is chosen because the stem ends in k, a voiceless consonant — one of the 't kofschip / 't fokschaap sounds. Compare the three strong verbs above, every one of which reshaped its vowel in the past.
Ik heb tien jaar bij dezelfde baas gewerkt voordat ik voor mezelf begon.
I worked ten years for the same boss before going self-employed. Perfect 'gewerkt'.
Common Mistakes
❌ Ik heb gisteren goed geslaapt.
Incorrect — slapen is strong, so the participle is 'geslapen', not a weak 'geslaapt'.
✅ Ik heb gisteren goed geslapen.
I slept well yesterday.
❌ Hij drinkte te veel bier.
Incorrect — drinken is strong; the past is 'dronk', not the regularised 'drinkte'.
✅ Hij dronk te veel bier.
He drank too much beer.
❌ Wij at samen in de stad.
Incorrect — the plural past of eten is 'aten' (long aa), not singular 'at'.
✅ Wij aten samen in de stad.
We ate together in town.
❌ Ik heb de hele dag gewerken.
Incorrect — werken is weak, so the participle is 'gewerkt', not the strong-looking 'gewerken'.
✅ Ik heb de hele dag gewerkt.
I worked all day.
❌ Wat heb je gegeeten?
Incorrect — the participle of eten is 'gegeten' (double ge, single ee), never 'gegeeten'.
✅ Wat heb je gegeten?
What did you eat?
Key Takeaways
- Three strong, one weak: eten (at/gegeten), drinken (dronk/gedronken), slapen (sliep/geslapen) reshape the vowel; werken (werkte/gewerkt) does not.
- The cognate clue: if the English verb is irregular (eat, drink, sleep), bet on strong; if regular (work), bet on weak.
- All four take hebben in the perfect — none of these is a verb of motion or change of state.
- Watch the vowel split in at / aten: short singular, long plural.
- Werken takes -te (not -de) because the stem ends in the voiceless k.
Now practice Dutch
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Start learning Dutch→Related Topics
- Verb Reference: How to Use These TablesA2 — A guide to reading the verb-reference pages: what each conjugation table shows (present, simple past, perfect with its auxiliary, participle), how strong/weak/mixed verbs are labelled, why the auxiliary is flagged, and which verbs to master first.
- Motion and Activity: Gaan, Komen, Doen, Maken in UseA1 — The four busiest verbs of everyday Dutch — gaan (ging/gegaan) and komen (kwam/gekomen) which take ZIJN, doen (deed/gedaan) and the weak maken (maakte/gemaakt) which take HEBBEN — with the two traps English speakers hit: the wrong auxiliary, and treating 'doen' like English do-support.
- Strong and Irregular Verbs: Master Reference TableB2 — A single scannable reference table of the most common Dutch strong, irregular, and mixed verbs — infinitive, simple past (singular and plural), past participle, auxiliary, and English — grouped by ablaut pattern so the regularities behind the irregulars become visible.
- Strong Verbs: Vowel Change in the PastB1 — How Dutch strong verbs form the simple past by changing the stem vowel, and how their past participle ends in -en — including the singular/plural vowel split that most resources leave out.
- Weak Past: The 't Kofschip Rule (-te vs -de)A2 — How to form the weak simple past in Dutch and how the 't kofschip rule decides between the endings -te(n) and -de(n) — applied to the underlying stem consonant, not the infinitive.