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Like many other languages, Dutch features both regular and irregular verbs. While the regular verbs have a basic set of instructions that allow you to calculate every possible version of that verb, irregular verbs don’t – at least not always. Some irregular verbs, however, are actually quite easy to conjugate, because they do follow a certain set of rules. Let’s see how it works, and where the problems begin.

Need a refreshing course? Check out the article on regular verb conjugation here. I’ll assume you’ll more or less know how it works if you decide to you read on.

Two types of irregular verbs

In a way, Dutch has two types of irregular verbs. The first version is truly irregular: the different forms are often barely, if at all, recognizable as versions of the same verb, and unexpected letters will appear and disappear seemingly at will – more about those later on in the post. But there’s good news: there are also many irregular verbs that follow most of the rules for regular verb conjugation, with minor differences. Let’s start with those, shall we?

Simple tenses

Take the verb lopen (Eng: to walk). This is one of the “semi-irregular” verbs – this is not an official term, I’m just using it to distinguish them from the fully irregular ones. For the present simple, for example, its conjugation is no different than it is for any regular verb out there. See for yourself when we compare it to the truly regular werken (Eng: to work):

Remember, the extra o is solely there for pronunciation purposes, and has nothing to do with the actual conjugation.

When we move on to the past simple, however, things do change. Semi-irregular verbs often end up with a vowel change instead of the added -t. The plural -en does stick around. The present simple for these two verbs looks like this:

As you can see, the vowel change works for every personal form, and the only difference between them is the added -en for the plural forms – almost exactly as is the case for the regular verb, save for the fact we don’t add an extra e in there, as there’s already one there by default.

While there aren’t any air-tight rules to determine which vowels change into which, there are some patterns. Some of the most useful ones are:

ie in the infinitive often turns into o (or oo for pronunciation)
ij often turns into e / ee
i often turns into o
e often turns into o
a often turns into i or ie
o often turns into ie

(Yes, ie turns into o, and o turns into ie. Thank us later).

Mind you: this is by no means a conclusive list that’s copy-pasteable to every verb out there, and you’ll definitely have to learn all of them from scratch, but it can be a somewhat useful list when you’re forced to take a guess, and it can definitely help you to recognize which tense is being used in a given text. Note that Dutch people generally don’t know about this list at all – they have simply developed a feel for it over time.

Past participle

As you may remember from the post about regular verbs, the past participle for those regular verbs is formed through the simple formula (although there are some exceptions):

ge + stem + d/t

in which the stem can sometimes be altered slightly for pronunciation reasons, and the occasional consonant change may occur. For the semi-irregular verbs, the following formula can be applied:

ge + stem + en

The vowel change that occurs in the past simple doesn’t usually occur in the past participle, although it sometimes can, and even a change in consonants may occur here, too. However, for lopen, things are actually quite easy:

gelopen

Since it’s the past participle, we do need an auxiliary verb to form a sentence with it, and so the sentence I have walked ends up like this:

ik heb gelopen

As you can see, even though the semi-irregular verbs do have some oddities compared to fully regular verbs, there are still a lot of similarities, and once you know how the vowel change (and the occasional consonant change) works out, you can still calculate every single form in every single tense.

Truly irregular verbs

For the truly irregular verbs, things aren’t so simple. Just like English, and many other languages, Dutch has a whole bunch of those, some of which may have an even stranger vowel change, and/or added or changed consonants; others change the entire word into something completely unrecognizable. This is the case, for example, for zijn (Eng: to be) – this highly irregular change also occurs in the English version. The table for the present simple ends up like this:

Remember the form u, the formal version of you, both singular and plural (if not, do read this post)? While in regular verbs, and semi-irregular verbs, it follows the pattern of he/she/it, in fully irregular verbs, it often follows the pattern for je/jij – for zijn, both are considered correct, although u is is considered much more formal than u bent.

And for the past simple:

Not entirely unsimilar to English, despite the totally different infinitive, right?

The past principle of zijn is geweest. This makes sense when you realize the verb wezen is sort of a synonym for zijn, although it’s not really used like that in daily life – it does explain where all the Ws and Ss come from, though. It also appears in the imperative mood, about which I’ll write an article soon (update: there you go!).

Long story short

Let’s face it: irregular verbs are annoying and difficult, in every language, no matter how you look at it. Luckily, Dutch features a form of “semi-irregular” verbs. These do come with odd changes and different rules of conjugation, but they still follow a certain pattern that allows you to come up with the right answer, once you know said rules and the accompanying vowel changes.

For some irregular verbs, you’ll just have to learn every form of it by heart, but for others, you can actually follow these patterns. See it as a way of slightly simplifying an otherwise highly complicated part of grammar. At the very least, you’ve made it to all the way down here – now let’s just hope you’ll remember everything you have just gelezen.