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Questions & Answers about De student is hier.
How do I know whether to use de or het with student?
In Dutch, the word for "the" is either de or het. A great rule of thumb for beginners is that nouns referring to people, like professions or roles such as student, almost always take de.
The verb is looks exactly like English. Is that normal?
Yes, English and Dutch are closely related! For the verb zijn (to be), the form used for a third-person subject like de student (meaning he, she, or it) is is. It has the exact same spelling and meaning as in English.
If I want to replace de student with a pronoun like "he" or "she", what words do I use?
You would use hij for "he" and zij (or the unstressed form ze) for "she". Because student is a singular subject, the verb stays exactly the same: hij is hier (he is here) or zij is hier (she is here).
The words student and hier look just like English. Are they pronounced the same way?
They are very close, but they have a distinct Dutch sound. In student, the emphasis is on the second syllable (stu-DENT), and the "u" sounds a bit like the "u" in "pure". Hier means "here" and sounds similar, but usually ends with a rolling or raspy Dutch "r".