There’s a common word combination in Dutch that doesn’t make any sense in English, and therefore might be a bit hard for non-native speakers to wrap their heads around. The combination is aan het, and we use it to say we’re in the middle of doing something – it’s part of our present continuous. Here’s how it works and how to use it.
First things first
Let’s get this out of the way first, though: aan het also literally means at the. During summer break, a Dutch person is bound to text Ik zit aan het strand to their friends at some point, meaning: I’m at the beach, or literally: I sit at the beach. When a masculine/feminine noun is involved, it will be changed to aan de, like: Wat is er aan de hand? (Eng: What’s going on?) – read more about the different Dutch articles in this post. While this is a perfectly fine and normal use of aan het, it’s not what this post is about.
Aan het
The much stranger way to use aan het, is in a sentence like this one:
Ik ben aan het wandelen (Eng: I am walking)
In this sentence, aan het means currently in the act of, much like the present continuous in English. While technically, Ik ben wandelen is a usable sentence in Dutch, it means something else entirely – more about that at the end of the post. When you’re actually trying to say that you’re currently in the act of walking, you have to use aan het – or you can use the present simple, but like English, that’s not always how things work.
Used this way, aan has nothing to do with the word at in English, it’s just a random word we throw in to let the listener know we’re currently busy doing the thing we’re doing. An even stranger way to do this is to use a form of sitting, standing, or walking, as explained in this post.
Aan het will be used like this a lot. Almost always, the auxiliary verb is a form of zijn (Eng: to be), and the actual verb is the full verb, or infinitief (Eng: infinitive), the regular ones (and many irregular ones) of which end in -en in Dutch. Some examples:
Hij is tv aan het kijken (Eng: He’s watching tv)
We zijn een spelletje aan het spelen (Eng: We’re playing a game) (more about diminutives here)
Ben je aan het koken? (Eng: Are you cooking?) (more about inversion here)
Past tense
The exact same method is used when you’re forming sentences in the past tense, more specifically: our makeshift version of the past continuous. Usually, these sentences are followed by a …when xxx happened construction. For example:
Ik was aan het wandelen (…toen ik gebeld werd) (Eng: I was walking (…when I received a phonecall))
We waren aan het schaken (…toen de hond begon te blaffen) (Eng: We were playing chess (…when the dog started to bark))
Exception
One of the few exceptions to this aan het + infinitive rule, is when the verb werken (Eng: to work) is used, in which case we somehow usually end up using the noun instead of the infinitive.
Ik ben aan het werk (Eng: I’m working)
Don’t you just love Dutch exceptions?
Technically, Ik ben aan het werken is entirely grammatically correct, it’s just barely ever used. One of the few other ones this works with, is wandelen mentioned earlier: Ik ben aan de wandel (see how het turns into de? Wandel is apparently a masculine/feminine noun).
When you cannot use aan het
All of this doesn’t mean you can use aan het with every single verb there is. In fact, you can only use it with verbs that describe an action. You can’t use it with passive verbs, like hebben (Eng: to have). In those cases, you have to use the present simple.
This is also pretty much the case in English. Sure, you can say I am having an apple, but in this case, having means eating, which is an action. You can’t say something like: I am having a bike – unless you’re really, really hungry, perhaps. English also uses the present simple in these instances: I have a bike.
What happens when you skip aan het?
Like I said earlier, when you get rid of aan het in a sentence like Ik ben aan het wandelen, leaving yourself with just Ik ben wandelen, the meaning of the entire sentence changes. It’s one of those strange things where the present tense is used to describe something that will inevitably happen in the (near) future.
In this case, Ik ben wandelen means: I’m going for a walk now. It’s kind of a heads-up way of saying what you’re going to do: just so you know, I’m not going to reply to my work emails in the next half hour, because I’m going for a walk. The word even (in this case: for a short while) is also used a lot in these types of sentences: Ik ben even wandelen, or: I’m going to be walking for a bit.
It’s more or less like saying Well, I’m out in English – you’re not actually out yet, but you will be in a few moments.
Long story short
While aan het can literally mean the same as at the, and will do so on a lot of occasions, it can also mean something along the lines of being busy doing something. The Dutch use it to tell the listener they’re currently in the act of doing something, much like English speakers do when they use the present continuous.
Aan het can only be used this way when you’re actually performing an action, it can’t be used with passive verbs – again, just like the present continuous in English. It’s pretty much exactly the same, the only difference being these two little words we add in the middle.
I hope you’re still this article aan het readen, and you’re actually enjoying it. Either way, time to call it quits for now. Ik ben even lunchen!
