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Dutch verbs conjugate for tense in present and past, and for mood in indicative, subjunctive and imperative. The subjunctive mood in Dutch is archaic or formal, and is rarely used. There are two grammatical numbers (singular and plural) and three grammatical persons .
The form can end in a vowel or in a consonant (including t). For the verbs houden, rijden and their derivatives, the -d of the radical can be dropped in spoken language. In a formal context, the d is not dropped. Ik ga naar school ("I go to school") Ik rust ("I rest", radical ends in t) Ik hou van bloemen ("I love flowers", form without -d)
These verbs historically had present tense forms that resembled the past tenses of strong verbs, and can be recognised in modern Dutch by the absence of the -t in the third-person singular present (the English equivalents lack the -s in the same way). Preterite-present verbs have weak past tenses, but often irregularly formed.
Because Dutch had many spelling reforms, some forms had different spellings in the past. The stem was formerly spelled een-regardless of the ending, so eenen, eener etc. The modern spelling, given in the table, are written according to the rules of modern Dutch orthography. The forms in brackets are shortened forms that were occasionally used.
The ' t kofschip (Dutch pronunciation: [ət ˈkɔfsxɪp], the merchant-ship), ' t fokschaap (the breeding sheep), also often referred to as kofschiptaxi or soft ketchup (among foreign language learners), [1] rule is a mnemonic that determines the endings of a regular Dutch verb in the past indicative/subjunctive and the ending of the past participle.
Grammar-wise, it is possible to say zij is bezig te denken (lit. she is busy to think, she is thinking) or hij is bezig te slapen (lit. he is busy to sleep, he is sleeping), but it sounds strange in Dutch. In these cases, other forms of the continuous are generally used, specifically the second method: Zij is aan het denken and hij is aan het ...
This similarity between verbs may cause speakers of Dutch to conjugate English verbs according to Dutch grammar. We kissen her. (Dutch kussen means and is cognate with English to kiss. In Dutch grammar, verbs with plural subjects take a form identical to the infinitive, which in most cases has an en suffix.)
The Dutch alphabet in 1560, still including the long s. The modern Dutch alphabet, used for the Dutch language, consists of the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Depending on how y is used, six (or five) letters are vowels and 20 (or 21) letters are consonants. In some aspects, the digraph ij behaves as a single letter.