Irregular verbs (doen, gaan, staan, zien, komen)

Doen, Gaan, Staan, and Zien

Some of the most common verbs in Dutch are irregular, but luckily they are short and share a very similar pattern.

For regular verbs, you find the ik form (the stem) by dropping -en. For doen (to do), gaan (to go), staan (to stand), and zien (to see), you only drop the final -n.

(Note: For *gaan and staan, we drop one "a" in the ik form to follow Dutch spelling rules, but the vowel still sounds long!)*

Let's see doen in action:

Just like with regular verbs, when jij comes right after the verb to ask a question, you drop the -t:

Now let's look at gaan and staan:

And here is zien:

The Verb Komen

The verb komen (to come) has its own unique quirk. In the singular forms (ik, jij, hij), the o is short. But in the plural forms (wij, jullie, zij), the o sounds long!