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Vraag waarom en vertel het verhaal.

Vraag waarom en vertel het verhaal.
Ask why and tell the story.
From Lesson 43:The imperative mood (kom, luister)·Dutch

Breakdown of Vraag waarom en vertel het verhaal.

en
and
waarom
why
het verhaal
the story
vragen
to ask
vertellen
to tell

Questions & Answers about Vraag waarom en vertel het verhaal.

How do you form the command words vraag and vertel?
To give a command (the imperative), you use the stem of the verb. You usually find the stem by taking the full verb and dropping -en. So, vragen (to ask) becomes vraag, and vertellen (to tell) becomes vertel. Notice that vraag gets a double 'a' in the stem to keep the vowel sound long!
Why isn't there a word for "you" in this sentence?
Just like in English, Dutch commands don't normally use a subject pronoun like jij or u (you). You just start the sentence directly with the verb.
Why does vertellen lose an 'l' when it becomes the command vertel?
Dutch spelling rules don't allow a word to end in a double consonant. The full verb vertellen needs two 'l's to keep the 'e' sound short. When we drop the -en to make the command, the 'l' is now at the very end of the word, so we drop one of them: vertel.
Why is it het verhaal instead of de verhaal?
Dutch has two words for "the": de and het. Verhaal happens to be a neuter word, which means it always uses het. Since there is no easy rule to guess whether a word is a de or het word, it's always best to memorize the article together with the noun.

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