Kalender

Januari 2008

The simple past and T and D verbs The Dutch use the simple past tense to refer to an event that took place in the past. We speak of a t-verb when the crude stem (not the 'final' stem!) of a verb ends in the consonants t, h , f, c, k, s or p. All other verbs, i.e. verbs that do not end in any of these consonants, are considered d-verbs. It is probably quite difficult to remember these letters separately. To remember them, in Dutch we use the words 't kofschip ('the koff boat') or 't fokschaap ('the breeding sheep') which both contain all of the t-verb consonants. But I am afraid this will not help you a lot. For this purpose, I invented a new fish: the "pocket fish". Now, why did you need to know the difference between d- and t-verbs? The reason is that they follow different conjugations. They are similar, but where a t-verb takes -te(n) in the past tense, a d-verb takes -de(n). Conjugation of a t-verb ik je hij

[stem] + te [stem] + te [stem] + te

we jullie ze

[stem] + ten [stem] + ten [stem] + ten

we jullie ze

[stem] + den [stem] + den [stem] + den

Conjugation of a d-verb ik je hij

Zondag

[stem] + de [stem] + de [stem] + de

Maandag

Dinsdag 1

Woensdag 2 eten to eat

6

7 muts

sneeuw snow

8

Donderdag 3 winterjas

Vrijdag

Zaterdag

4

5

kanaal

donker

9

10

11

12

wit white

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31