Komen ("to come") is the mirror image of gaan: where gaan is movement away, komen is movement toward — arriving, showing up, originating from somewhere (Ik kom uit Nederland). It is a strong, irregular verb with one feature that surprises every learner: its past tense is kwam / kwamen, with a kw- that appears nowhere else in the verb. Like all motion verbs it takes zijn in the perfect. This page also covers the very Dutch enclitic komt-ie you'll hear constantly in speech.
Principal parts
| Infinitive | Simple past (sing.) | Past participle | Perfect auxiliary | Class |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| komen | kwam | gekomen | zijn | strong / irregular |
Present tense
| Person | Form | English |
|---|---|---|
| ik | kom | I come |
| jij / je | komt | you come |
| u | komt | you come (formal) |
| hij / zij / het | komt | he / she / it comes |
| wij / we | komen | we come |
| jullie | komen | you (pl.) come |
| zij / ze | komen | they come |
The present is regular in shape: stem kom-, jij/hij adds -t (komt), plural is the infinitive komen. The o is short throughout — a single m keeps it short, so don't be tempted to write *koomt. After inversion the jij form drops the -t: je komt → kom je?.
Kom je vanavond ook naar het feest?
Are you coming to the party tonight too? — inverted jij, '-t' dropped: 'kom je'.
Simple past: kwam / kwamen — the kw- form
| Person | Past form |
|---|---|
| ik / jij / u / hij / zij / het | kwam |
| wij / jullie / zij (pl.) | kwamen |
Here is the surprise: the past stem is kwam-, with a w that is absent from the present and the participle. Singular kwam, plural kwamen. This is not optional and not a typo — komen is one of a small set of strong verbs whose past introduces this kw- (historically the w belonged to the older root and survives only in the preterite).
Notice also the vowel-length split between singular and plural, the classic strong-verb pattern. The singular kwam has a short a — the syllable is closed by the m (kwam). The plural kwamen has a long aa sound, even though it is written with a single a, because that a now sits in an open syllable (kwa-men). So singular and plural differ in vowel quality as well as ending — exactly the same shape you see in zat/zaten, gaf/gaven, nam/namen.
Hij kwam een halfuur te laat op het sollicitatiegesprek.
He turned up half an hour late to the job interview. — singular past 'kwam'.
We kwamen elkaar toevallig tegen in de stad.
We bumped into each other by chance in town. — plural past 'kwamen' (long vowel).
The perfect: ben gekomen (with ZIJN)
Komen is a verb of directed motion, so its perfect auxiliary is zijn, and the participle is gekomen.
| Person | Perfect | English |
|---|---|---|
| ik | ben gekomen | I have come / came |
| jij / u | bent gekomen | you have come |
| hij / zij / het | is gekomen | he / she / it has come |
| wij / jullie / zij | zijn gekomen | we / you / they have come |
As with gaan, the English habit of saying "have come" makes *ik heb gekomen feel natural — and it is wrong. Always ik ben gekomen, hij is gekomen. (See Hebben vs Zijn as the Perfect Auxiliary for the full motion/change-of-state rule.)
Bedankt dat je bent gekomen, dat waardeer ik echt.
Thanks for coming, I really appreciate it. — perfect with 'zijn': 'bent gekomen'.
Imperative
The command form is the bare stem kom! ("come!"), softened in everyday use to Kom maar ("come on / come here") or Kom binnen ("come in").
Kom binnen, het is koud buiten!
Come in, it's cold outside! — imperative 'kom'.
The enclitic komt-ie
In spoken Dutch the pronoun hij routinely attaches to a preceding verb as the clitic -ie, and komen produces the very common komt-ie ("here he/it comes"). You'll hear it the moment something appears — a bus, a person, the food:
Daar komt-ie aan, de bus!
Here it comes, the bus! — spoken enclitic 'komt-ie' (= komt hij).
Hoe laat komt-ie thuis vanavond?
What time's he coming home tonight? — '-ie' is the reduced spoken form of 'hij'.
This -ie is spoken/informal: you would write komt hij in any neutral or formal text. It attaches only after the verb (in inversion or questions), never as a subject at the start of a clause. The full set of reduced pronoun forms — 'k, je, ze, 't, -ie, m'n — lives on Reduced and Clitic Forms.
Where you come from: komen uit
A high-frequency idiom worth flagging: to say where someone is from, Dutch uses komen uit ("to come out of"), not the present perfect.
Ik kom uit België, maar ik woon al jaren in Rotterdam.
I'm from Belgium, but I've lived in Rotterdam for years. — origin: 'komen uit' in the present.
Common Mistakes
❌ Ik heb te laat gekomen.
Incorrect — komen is a motion verb and takes 'zijn': 'ben ... gekomen'.
✅ Ik ben te laat gekomen.
I came too late.
❌ Hij komde gisteren langs.
Incorrect — komen is strong; the past is 'kwam', not a weak '-de' form.
✅ Hij kwam gisteren langs.
He dropped by yesterday.
❌ We kwammen samen aan.
Incorrect — the plural past is 'kwamen' (single m, long aa), not 'kwammen'.
✅ We kwamen samen aan.
We arrived together.
❌ Komt je morgen?
Incorrect — after inversion the jij form drops the -t: 'kom je morgen?'.
✅ Kom je morgen?
Are you coming tomorrow?
❌ Ik ben uit Spanje.
Incorrect for stating origin — use 'komen uit': 'Ik kom uit Spanje'.
✅ Ik kom uit Spanje.
I'm from Spain.
Key Takeaways
- Present: ik kom, jij/hij komt, wij/jullie/zij komen; inversion drops the -t: kom je?.
- Past: singular kwam, plural kwamen — note the irregular kw- and the short-a / long-aa split.
- Perfect takes zijn: ik ben gekomen, hij is gekomen — never hebben.
- Imperative: kom!.
- The spoken enclitic komt-ie (= komt hij) is everywhere in casual speech; write komt hij.
- Origin is komen uit: Ik kom uit ….
Now practice Dutch
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