Learn Dutch: Ik snijd de tomaat en de ui. - I cut the tomato and the onion.

The full verb (infinitive) is snijden. To find the ik (I) form, we drop the -en to get the stem: snijd. In Dutch, a 'd' at the end of a word is pronounced like a 't', but we keep the 'd' in spelling to match the verb's stem.

Is there a rule for knowing that tomaat and ui take the article de?

Both tomaat and ui are de words. A helpful tip for learners is that almost all individual fruits and vegetables in Dutch take de (like de appel, de banaan, and de wortel). One of the rare exceptions is the word for fruit in general: het fruit.

What happens to the spelling if I make de tomaat and de ui plural?

The plurals are de tomaten and de uien. Notice that tomaat loses one 'a' in the plural. This follows the Dutch spelling rule for open syllables: because the syllable now ends in a vowel (to-ma-ten), a single 'a' is enough to keep the long 'a' sound.

This lesson is about words like terwijl (while). How would that look if I added it here?