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.