English splits causation across three different verbs depending on the nuance: let someone do something (permission), make someone do something (compulsion), and have / get something done (arranging for it through a third party). Dutch covers all three with one verb: laten. Laat hem maar gaan is "let him go," Hij liet ons wachten is "he made us wait," and Ik laat mijn haar knippen is "I'm getting my haircut" — same verb, three English translations. This economy is one of the genuinely satisfying simplifications in Dutch, but it comes with a price: you have to read laten from context, and its perfect tense behaves unusually, producing a double infinitive (covered in depth at verbs/modals/double-infinitive-ipp). This page shows you how laten spans the causative spectrum, and introduces the rarer, more literary doen-causative alongside it.
The structure: laten + bare infinitive
Laten governs a bare infinitive — no te — placed at the end of the clause, exactly like a modal verb. The thing being caused (the person or object) sits as the object before the infinitive.
Ik laat de auto repareren.
I'm having the car repaired. — laten + bare infinitive 'repareren'.
Laat me met rust.
Leave me alone. (lit. let me with rest) — a fixed, very common phrase.
Mijn ouders laten me niet uitgaan op zondag.
My parents don't let me go out on Sundays. — permission sense.
The crucial contrast with English: there is no to. English "I let him go" has a bare infinitive too, but "I want him to go" inserts to — and learners reflexively add te to laten. Resist it. Laten never takes te.
The three meanings, one verb
The same laten + infinitive frame carries permission, compulsion, and "have done," and only context disambiguates.
Permission: "let"
Laat de kinderen buiten spelen, het is droog.
Let the kids play outside, it's dry. — permission/allowing.
Hij liet me zijn nieuwe telefoon zien.
He showed me his new phone. (lit. let me see) — laten zien = to show.
That last example is worth memorizing as a set phrase: laten zien literally means "let see" and is the everyday Dutch word for to show. There's no separate verb for it the way English has show; Dutch builds it from laten + the perception verb zien.
Compulsion: "make"
Hij liet ons lang wachten.
He made us wait a long time. — compulsion: causing us to wait.
De lerares liet de klas de hele tekst overschrijven.
The teacher made the class copy out the whole text.
Have/get something done: arranging it
This is the sense English handles with have or get + past participle, and it's where laten is indispensable. You are not doing the action yourself — you arrange for someone else to do it.
Ik laat mijn haar knippen.
I'm getting my hair cut. — I don't cut it; the barber does. laten knippen.
We laten het dak volgende week vervangen.
We're having the roof replaced next week. — arranging for workers to do it.
Note the difference in meaning that laten signals. Ik knip mijn haar would mean you cut your own hair; Ik laat mijn haar knippen means someone cuts it for you. English makes the same distinction with "I cut my hair" versus "I have my hair cut," but English uses a participle (cut) where Dutch uses a bare infinitive (knippen).
Reflexive and intransitive uses
Laten combines with reflexives and with itself in idioms that are worth recognizing as wholes.
Laat je niet gek maken door het nieuws.
Don't let yourself be driven crazy by the news. — reflexive 'je ... laten'.
Dat laat zich makkelijk uitleggen.
That's easily explained. (lit. that lets itself easily explain) — a near-passive idiom.
The laat zich ... pattern is a tidy alternative to a passive: Dat laat zich raden ("That's easy to guess"). It's mildly formal and very common in writing.
The perfect: a double infinitive
When you put laten into the perfect tense, you'd expect its participle gelaten. But because a bare infinitive follows, laten refuses to become a participle and stays an infinitive — the Infinitivus pro Participio effect. The auxiliary is hebben.
Ik heb het laten repareren.
I had it repaired. — 'laten', not 'gelaten', because an infinitive follows.
Ze hebben ons een uur laten wachten.
They made us wait for an hour. — perfect 'hebben ... laten wachten'.
So the perfect of Ik laat mijn haar knippen is Ik heb mijn haar laten knippen — two infinitives, laten knippen, with no participle anywhere. The real participle gelaten survives only when no infinitive follows: Ik heb het gelaten ("I left it alone / didn't do it"). The mechanics of this double infinitive — including the way the auxiliary jumps to the front of the cluster in subordinate clauses (...dat ik het heb laten repareren) — are covered in full at verbs/modals/double-infinitive-ipp.
Laten conjugation
Laten is a strong verb. Memorize its principal parts so the past and the perfect come out right.
| Form | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| Present | ik laat, jij laat, hij laat | wij/jullie/zij laten |
| Past | liet | lieten |
| Perfect | heeft gelaten (no following verb) / heeft laten + inf. (double infinitive) | |
Hij liet ons lang wachten voordat hij eindelijk opendeed.
He made us wait a long time before he finally opened up. — past 'liet'.
Doen as a causative: the literary cousin
Older and more formal Dutch had a second causative, doen ("to do/make"), used the same way: doen + bare infinitive. In modern spoken Dutch it has largely retreated, surviving mainly in fixed, often emotive expressions and in elevated or literary register. Where laten is neutral, doen tends to sound deliberate, poetic, or set.
Dat doet me lachen.
That makes me laugh. — fixed doen-causative; you can't swap in laten here.
Dat doet me denken aan onze vakantie in Italië.
That reminds me of our holiday in Italy. (lit. makes me think of) — a very common fixed phrase.
De wind deed de bladeren ritselen.
The wind made the leaves rustle. — literary register; everyday speech would more likely rephrase.
For learners, the practical takeaway is: use laten for productive, everyday causation, and treat doen me denken aan, doen me lachen, doen me deugd and a handful of similar expressions as memorized idioms. Don't invent new doen-causatives — Dat doet me wachten sounds wrong where Dat laat me wachten (or a rephrase) is fine.
Common Mistakes
❌ Ik laat mijn haar te knippen.
Incorrect — laten takes a BARE infinitive, never 'te'. Drop the te.
✅ Ik laat mijn haar knippen.
I'm getting my hair cut.
❌ Ik heb het gelaten repareren.
Incorrect — with a following infinitive, laten goes IPP (stays an infinitive): 'laten repareren', not 'gelaten'.
✅ Ik heb het laten repareren.
I had it repaired.
❌ Hij maakte ons wachten.
Unidiomatic — Dutch doesn't use 'maken' for 'make someone do'; that role belongs to laten.
✅ Hij liet ons wachten.
He made us wait.
❌ Kun je me je foto's tonen? — Ik wil ze laten.
Incomplete/wrong — 'to show' is the set phrase 'laten zien'; bare 'laten' here means 'leave alone'.
✅ Laat me je foto's eens zien.
Show me your photos. — laten zien = to show.
❌ Dat laat me denken aan vroeger.
Unidiomatic — 'to remind' is the fixed doen-causative 'doen denken aan', not laten.
✅ Dat doet me denken aan vroeger.
That reminds me of the old days.
Key Takeaways
- Laten
- bare infinitive is the single Dutch verb for English let (permission), make (compulsion), and have/get done (arranging).
- Never insert te: it's laten knippen, not laten te knippen.
- laten zien = "to show" is a high-frequency set phrase built from laten
- zien.
- In the perfect, laten stays an infinitive when a verb follows — the double infinitive heb laten repareren — and only surfaces as gelaten when nothing follows.
- Doen
- infinitive is a literary/fixed causative; use it only in memorized expressions like doen denken aan and doen lachen, and use laten for everything productive.
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Start learning Dutch→Related Topics
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