Lesson 2 – Dit is Jan

Text

Ik heet Kees. Dit is Jan. Hij woont hier sinds 2 maanden.

Vocabulary:

dit = this

is = is

hij = he              (ij like    e + i, e like ‘a’ in ‘and‘ and i like ee in ‘feedback‘ )

hij woont = he lives

hier = here          (ie like ee in ‘feedback‘)

sinds = since

maanden = months     ( e like e in ‘pages‘ )

maand = month

 

grammar

‘to be’

ik ben = I am

jij bent = you are

hij/zij/het is = he/she/it is

wij zijn = we are

jullie zijn = you are (plural)

zij zijn = they are

9 new words = 19 words

verbs

regular verbs have the following suffixes:

ik        =  –

jij         = -t

hij/zij   = -t

wij         =  -en

jullie      = -en

zij           = -en

Regular verb example: werken = to work

How to make a root?

The root of a verb is the part which you use to do other things with the verb, like making the past tense.

Let’s take the word: werken

After the e there are multiple consonants, so we can keep the e in our root.

The root is: werk, because we remove -en and you only have werk left now.

Now let’s take the word lopen (to walk), the o is pronounced like oo, a long o, because after the consonant you get a vowel, we add o to it and we get loopen, now we remove the -en and we get loop, the root.

Now we take the word: wonen

The same process here: consonant + vowel, so we need to add o to the word, which gives us woonen, now remove -en and we get woon.

How to make a regular verb?

1. You need to have the verb, which is in this case ‘werken’

2. You remove -en at the end of the verb. We have ‘werk’ now, the root or what it is called in Dutch: ‘stam’.

3. You add the suffix which you need to the verb and you add the personal pronoun at the start. If I want to say: ‘I work’, this becomes ‘ik werk’.

Personal pronoun + root + suffix

ik = personal pronoun

werk = stam

suffix = -, we don’t need to add anything, so that’s it.

If we want to say: ‘he works’, we do the same:

personal pronoun =       hij

root =                                  werk

suffix =                                 -t

We get:  hij werkt.

It’s as simple as that.

 

Rules to remember!

 

Forming a root:

1. multiple consonants = keeping the letter

2. consonant + vowel = add an extra vowel

 

Making a regular verb:

1. make the root

2. remove -en

3. add the suffix