Dutch lesson: Lesson 4

Well, before going on to questions, I’ll introduce you to you, jij. unstressed is je. Jij and je are very INFORMAL. Jij needs a form of he. (with a -t)

?You speak Dutch.|Je spreekt Nederlands.

But, instead of using heeft, jij/je uses hebt.

?You have it, but I need it.|Jij hebt het, maar ik heb het nodig.

If you speak to someone you don’t know, or someone who is more important than you, you use u instead of jij/je. U behaves the same as hij/zij.

?You have|U heeft.

?You need it|U heeft het nodig.

Well, It’s time for Questions.

It’s not so hard, only put the sentence in a different order.

For normal sentences, the order is Subject-Verb-Object.

In a question it is: Verb-Subject-Object.

DO NOT USE DOE, LIKE IN ENGLISH!!!!!!!

?Do you have it?|Heb je het?

?Do they need English?|Hebben ze Engels Nodig?

?Do you(form.) speak Dutch?|Spreekt u Nederlands?

?Do we need it and does she have it?|Hebben we het nodig en heeft ze het?

It’s not really hard.

To answer, say: Ja (yes), or Nee (no).

?Do you(inform.) have it? No.|Heb je het? Nee.

?Do you(form.) speak Dutch? Yes.|Spreekt u Nederlands? Ja.

A last thing I want to tell you, is that the verb, as used by we and they (wij and zij) is also the infinitive.

?To have|Hebben

?To need|Nodig hebben

?To speak|Spreken

Spreek is long, but it isn’t spreeken, but spreken (you would say spreeken the same as spreken). Actually, hebben is a short e as in bed, hebben is another e, and you have to pronounce it as in ze and je.

Hope you understand it all!

If you don’t, just do some lessons again!

Bye


NOTE: This appears to be the last lesson so far. The course is not marked as finished so there should probably be more lessons in the future. In the meanwhile, you might want to check out some of the other courses we have:

Introduction to Dutch a course of Dutch with 5 lessons produced by Linas
Introduction to Sambahsa-3 a course of Sambahsa with 18 lessons produced by mundialecter
Introduction to Sambahsa-2 a course of Sambahsa with 14 lessons produced by mundialecter
The Morse Code in One Minute a course of Morse with 1 lessons produced by Linas

You can also return to the main page of the labs to see all of the courses we have here.