Breakdown of Morgen draag ik een blauwe blouse naar het werk.
ik
I
morgen
tomorrow
naar
to
het werk
the work
een
a, an
dragen
to wear
blauw
blue
de blouse
the blouse
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Questions & Answers about Morgen draag ik een blauwe blouse naar het werk.
Why is morgen placed at the very beginning of the sentence, and why does draag come directly after it?
Dutch main clauses follow the “V2” rule: the finite verb must be in the second position. If you start with any element other than the subject (for example, a time adverb like morgen), you must invert subject and verb. So putting morgen first pushes draag into slot two, and ik follows in slot three.
Why do we say een blauwe blouse and not een blauw blouse?
In Dutch, adjectives get an extra -e (become inflected) when they precede a noun that has a definite article (de/het) or an indefinite article (een) and is a common-gender noun (formerly “de-word”). Blouse is a common-gender noun, so the adjective blauw takes -e, yielding blauwe blouse.
What exactly does naar mean here, and why is it naar het werk instead of just werk?
Naar generally means “to” and indicates movement toward a destination. Here, naar het werk means “to work” (i.e. towards your workplace). You need the definite article het because werk in this context refers to a specific place or context (“the workplace”), not the abstract notion of work.
Could I omit the article and say naar werk like in naar school or naar kantoor?
No. In Dutch, certain locations (school, huis, kantoor) are idiomatically used without an article after naar, but werk is not one of them. You must say naar het werk. Omitting het here sounds unnatural.
Why is the present tense draag used if I’m talking about tomorrow? Is there a future tense in Dutch?
Dutch often uses the present tense to describe near-future events, just like English “I’m leaving tomorrow.” You can also form a future tense with zullen (e.g. Morgen zal ik een blauwe blouse naar het werk dragen), but it’s less common for simple statements about planned actions.
When would I use de blauwe blouse instead of een blauwe blouse?
Use een when mentioning a non-specific or new item (“a blue blouse”). Use de when both speaker and listener know which blouse you mean (“the blue blouse that I bought yesterday”). The article signals definiteness: een = indefinite, de = definite.
Why is werk a “het”-word (neuter), and does that affect anything else in the sentence?
Werk is classified as a neuter noun in Dutch, so its definite article is het. In this sentence, you only see it in naar het werk. Adjective agreement doesn’t apply here because werk is not directly modified by an adjective. If you did describe werk (e.g. “the busy work”), you would say het drukke werk (adjective takes -e because it’s preceded by het).