In the table below, you can see the first Dutch verbs you will learn.
The verbs above are presented in the infinitive form, and if we want to combine them with personal pronouns in order to make sentences, we will need to conjugate them.
| Infinitive | Stem |
|---|---|
| drinken | drink |
| wachten | wacht |
| kennen | ken |
| bakken | bak |
Conjugating a verb simply means to change its shape, and in order to do this, we first create the stem form by cutting off the en at the end, and if we end up with the same letter twice, we'll also cut off one of them.
Now we know how to obtain the stem of a verb, we can use it in our conjugation rules for different persons.
| Person | Rule | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ik | stem | ik drink I drink | ik wacht I wait | ik ken I know | ik bak I bake |
| jij | stem + t | jij drinkt you drink | jij wacht you wait | jij kent you know | jij bakt you bake |
| hij/zij/het | stem + t | hij drinkt he drinks | zij wacht she waits | hij kent he knows | zij bakt she knows |
| wij/jullie/zij | infinitive | wij drinken we drink | jullie wachten you wait | zij kennen they know | zij bakken they bake |
Note that for the second person singular, jij, we don't add a t after the stem if the stem already ends in a t.
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