Breakdown of Kies een boek en lees het verhaal.
een
a/an
en
and
het boek
the book
lezen
to read
kiezen
to choose
het verhaal
the story
Questions & Answers about Kies een boek en lees het verhaal.
Why is there no word for "you" in this sentence?
Because this sentence is giving a command (the imperative mood). In Dutch, just like in English, you simply drop the subject (the "you") when telling someone to do something.
Why do kies and lees come at the very beginning of their phrases?
In command sentences, the verb takes the very first position. We see this twice here: Kies starts the first command, and lees starts the second command immediately after the joining word en (and).
The dictionary verbs are kiezen (to choose) and lezen (to read). Why do their command forms end in -s instead of -z?
To make a command, you use the verb's stem (the ik form). When you remove the -en ending from kiezen and lezen, you are left with a z at the end. However, a strict spelling rule in Dutch is that words can never end in z (or v). Therefore, the z changes to an s, giving us kies and lees.
Why is it het verhaal instead of de verhaal?
Nouns in Dutch use either de or het for the word "the". Verhaal (story) is a neuter noun, which means it requires het. Because there are very few rules for guessing which word to use, it is always best to memorize the article along with the noun!
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