Starting Your Own Business
When talking about starting a company or managing resources, you will often want to emphasize ownership—such as referring to your own business or your own capital.
To do this in Dutch, simply place the adjective eigen (own) directly after a possessive pronoun (like mijn, zijn, or haar).
An important rule makes this very easy: unlike most other adjectives, eigen generally does not take an -e ending when used for possession. It stays as eigen regardless of whether the noun is a de word, a het word, or plural.
| I am writing my own financial business plan. | Ik schrijf mijn eigen financiële zakenplan. |
| She is starting the enterprise with her own capital. | Zij begint de onderneming met haar eigen kapitaal. |
If you use another adjective alongside eigen, that second adjective still follows the normal inflection rules. Notice how succesvolle gets an -e ending below, but eigen does not:
| He is building his own successful enterprise. | Hij bouwt aan zijn eigen succesvolle onderneming. |
Using Eigen with Ons and Onze
The uninflected form of eigen remains consistent even when you use the first-person plural ("our").
However, remember that the possessive pronoun itself still changes depending on the noun's gender and number. You must use onze before de words and plurals, and ons before singular het words.
| Our own accountant doesn't do the bookkeeping anymore. | Onze eigen boekhouder doet de boekhouding niet meer. |
| Are we losing our own capital? | Verliezen we ons eigen kapitaal? |
| We have our own resources for the business plan. | Wij hebben onze eigen middelen voor het zakenplan. |