Breakdown of Wij kletsten vaak in het college.
wij
we
in
in
vaak
often
kletsen
to chat
het college
the lecture, the class
Questions & Answers about Wij kletsten vaak in het college.
How do we know to use -ten instead of -den for the past tense of kletsen?
This is where the 't kofschip rule comes in! First, find the stem by removing -en from the infinitive verb kletsen, which gives us klets. The last letter is s. Because s is one of the consonants in 't kofschip (a voiceless sound), the past tense gets a t. Since wij is plural, we add -ten to the stem: klets + ten = kletsten.
Wait, doesn't college mean the school itself, like a university?
It is a false friend! In Dutch, college usually means a lecture or a specific class at a university, not the institution itself. If you want to talk about the school you attend, you would say de universiteit (university) or de hogeschool (college of higher education).
Could I put vaak at the beginning of the sentence: Vaak wij kletsten in het college?
Almost, but remember the verb-second rule. If you start with the adverb vaak, the verb must still come in the second position, and the subject moves to the third spot. So it would be: Vaak kletsten wij in het college. In our example sentence, wij is first, so the verb is second, and vaak comes third.
What is the difference between kletsen and praten?
Praten simply means to talk, while kletsen is more informal and means to chat, to chatter, or to gossip. Using kletsten here implies they were having a casual (and probably disruptive!) conversation during the lecture.
Learn Wij kletsten vaak in het college and more in Dutch
All course content and exercises are completely free — no paywalls, no trial periods, no signup needed.
- ✓ Practice with interactive exercises
- ✓ Track your progress with spaced repetition
- ✓Learn at your own pace — completely free