Dutch Grammar

 

Introduction

Dutch is a language of Germanic origin and besides The Netherlands and Belgium, it’s also spoken on the Netherlands Antilles, Suriname and many people in Indonesia also speak it (all former colonies of The Netherlands). And in South-Africa, they speak a language derived from Dutch: Afrikaans.

We’ll start by teaching you how to introduce yourself in Dutch. Take a look at the following Dutch sentence and it’s English translation. “Ik ben Robert” “I am Robert” Here we see your very first Dutch sentence where you introduce yourself as Robert, a fictional person. You should of course replace the name with your own name. Although the sentence consists of only three words we are going to carefully examine each word. The first word “Ik” is the Dutch equivalent of the English word “I”, also referred to as 1^st person singular. It’s a subject pronoun. The second word “ben” is a verb. It’s a conjugation of the irregular Dutch verb “zijn”, which is the Dutch equivalent of “to be”. Now we’ve seen how to introduce yourself using “ik ben” but we can also introduce other people, take a look at the following examples:

Ik ben Robert	I am Robert
Jij bent Robert	You are Robert
Hij is Robert	He is Robert
Zij is Roberta	She is Roberta
Het is Robert	It is Robert
Wij zijn Robert en Paul	We are Robert and Paul
Jullie zijn Robert en Paul	You are Robert and Paul
Zij zijn Robert en Paul	They are Robert and Paul

Articles and Gender

Articles Take a look at these Dutch sentences:

Hij is een vader	He is a father
Zij is de moeder	She is the mother
Het is de stoel	It is the chair
Het is een stoel	It is a chair
Het is een huis	It is a house
Het is het huis	It is the house

It looks pretty logical at the beginning. You’ll quickly notice that “een” is the correct Dutch translation of “a” and “an”. But what’s the correct translation of “the”? You see two different Dutch word for “the”, you see “de” and “het”, but which one is the right one?   Gender Grammar Rules In general, gender is used to distinguish between male and female, sometimes referred to as masculine and feminine. The following examples use gender in different ways and places to demonstrate their behavior.

Grammar + Rules	Dutch
my son is a student [masculine + noun]	mijn zoon is een student .
her daughter is a student [feminine + noun]	haar dochter is een student .
he has a tall brother [adjective + masculine]	hij heeft een grote broer .
she has a tall sister [adjective + feminine]	ze heeft een grote zus .
his brothers are young [plural masculine + adjective]	zijn broers zijn jong .
his sisters are young [plural feminine + adjective]	zijn zussen zijn jong .

Hebben – to have

In this lesson we’ll also introduce another irregular Dutch verb, the verb “hebben”, which means “to have”. Take a look at the full conjugation and translation of this verb:

Ik heb	I have
Jij hebt	You have
Hij/Zij/Het heeft	He/she/it has
Wij hebben	We have
Jullie hebben	You have
Zij hebben	They have

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