Zomin
Dutch conjugation. I'm just now learning how to properly conjugate words to for a proper sentence. It's not easy for me to learn, but I'm doing my best. I understand that all tense's need to have their stem, and all that. But I'm still not quite getting how that works into the sentence. For instance, if I wanted to say; "I need to work on replies." would it be "Ik moeten werk op antwoorden." For some reason it just doesn't look right to me. Or maybe I'm just that uncertain of myself that nothing I write will look right haha.
Dec 14, 2011 1:57 AM
Answers · 2
Hey! When you use this sentences "I need to work on replies." you can see you have 2 verbes "Need"(moeten) and "Work" (werken) so i can understand that it's difficult to understand which verb to use, In singural(I,you,he/she) is it always "moet" In plural (you,we,they) is it always "moeten" So it's "Ik moet werken..." (I need to work ...) But now i understand why you doubt "Why does work becomes "werken" en not "werk"" This is the hard thing to explain and to understand so work becomes infinitive in dutch = werken
October 26, 2012
Hiya! I would watch out with translating "on" from English to "op" in Dutch. It only means "op" if it's referring to a point in space. Example: The chair is on the table. Becomes "De stoel is op de tafel". That's pretty much the only use of "on" meaning "op" in Dutch. For that sentence, "I need to work on replies" I would translate it as "Ik moet werken aan antwoorden." The verb "work" (as you probably will have noticed) is not singular. In this sentence, "need" ("moet") is the main verb, and is therefore conjugated in the first person singular (I, "ik"). The verb "work" ("werken") is used as the infinitive: to work (werken). The "to" and "work" belong together. There is no such construction in Dutch, though. All verbs in Dutch end in "-en" in their unconjugated form. ..if you have any more questions about this horribly confusing language, feel free to ask me :)
December 22, 2011
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