The Verb To Be (Zijn ) in Dutch

 

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Introductions

We’ll start by teaching you how to introduce yourself in Dutch. Take a look at the following Dutch sentence and it’s English translation.

“Ik ben Aiden”
“I am Aiden”

Here we see your very first Dutch sentence where you introduce yourself as Aiden, a fictional person. You should of course replace the name with your own name. Although the sentence consists of only three words we are going to carefully examine each word.

The first word “Ik” is the Dutch equivalent of the English word “I”, also referred to as 1^st person singular. It’s a subject pronoun. The second word “ben” is a verb. It’s a conjugation of the irregular Dutch verb “zijn”, which is the Dutch equivalent of “to be”. Now we’ve seen how to introduce yourself using “ik ben” but we can also introduce other people, take a look at the following examples:

Ik ben Aiden	I am Aiden
Jij bent Aiden	You are Aiden
Hij is Aiden	He is Aiden
Zij is Caroline	She is Caroline
Het is Aiden	It is Aiden
Wij zijn Aiden en Elias	We are Aiden and Elias
Jullie zijn Aiden en Elias	You are Aiden and Elias
Zij zijn Aiden en Elias	They are Aiden and Elias

Thats alot of new words, but it’s all very easy. Now that you’ve seen all subject pronouns in Dutch, you know how to refer to people. And besides that, you’ve also learned your first Dutch verb, an irregular verb: “Zijn”, in English “To be”. There is also a small new word that appeared in this lesson, the Dutch words “en”, which means “and”.

It’s also a good exercise to try to pronounce every Dutch sentence you see on this page, and when you’re uncertain of how to pronounce a certain character or group of characters then go to the pronunciation page.

Summary

In this lesson you’ve learned two aspects of Dutch grammar, you’ve learned the subject pronouns and you’ve learned the full conjugation of the irregular Dutch verb “zijn”.

Vocabulary

We’ll ask you to study a number of words in each lesson , this time we’ll give you a couple of very easy words to study. Learn them in both directions! English-Dutch and Dutch-English.

Vocabulary

vader	father
moeder	mother
oma	grandmother
opa	grandfather

Exercises

Each lesson will come with some exercises so you can practice the grammar and vocabulary of this lesson.

Exercise A: Translate to English:

1. Ik ben
2. Jij bent
3. Hij/zij/het is
4. Wij zijn
5. Jullie zijn
6. Zij zijn

Solutions

After you’ve done the exercises you can check whether your answer is correct using the following solutions:

Solution of Exercise A:

1. Ik ben (I am)
2. Jij bent (You are – informal)
3. Hij/zij/het is (He/she/it is)
4. Wij zijn (We are)
5. Jullie zijn (You are – plural)
6. Zij zijn (They are

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