Breakdown of Hij eet geen brood en drinkt geen melk.
hij
he / it (referring to a 'de'-word)
en
and
geen
no / not any
eten
to eat
drinken
to drink
de melk
the milk
het brood
the bread
Questions & Answers about Hij eet geen brood en drinkt geen melk.
Why does this sentence use geen instead of niet to say "does not"?
In Dutch, you use geen to negate a noun that doesn't have a specific article in front of it (like "the", "this", or "my"). Because brood (bread) and melk (milk) are general nouns here, we use geen. It is often helpful to translate geen literally as "no" or "not any": "He eats no bread and drinks no milk."
Does the word geen change its spelling depending on the noun?
No, geen is very easy to use because it never changes its form. Whether the noun is singular, plural, a "de" word, a "het" word, or an uncountable noun like melk or brood, you always just use geen.
Why is there no hij (he) before drinkt in the second part of the sentence?
Just like in English, if the same person is doing both actions connected by the word en (and), you don't need to repeat the subject pronoun. The hij at the beginning applies to both eet and drinkt.
Why is eet spelled with a double "e" when the full verb is eten?
This is a great refresher on Dutch spelling rules for keeping vowels "long". In the full verb eten (e-ten), the first "e" is long because it ends a syllable. When we drop the "-en" to conjugate it, we are left with "et". To keep that vowel sounding long rather than short, we have to double it to eet.
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