🇳🇱 Flashwords

Practice: Perfect Tense with Zijn

Perfectum deel 2 — het perfectum met zijn

In deel 1 you saw that most verbs form the perfectum with hebben. This lesson covers deel 2: a fixed group of verbs that always take zijn as the auxiliary, plus verbs of movement from A to B that switch to zijn when a destination is mentioned.
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Key rules for Perfect Tense with Zijn

Verbs that always take zijn

A fixed group of common verbs forms the perfectum with zijn, not hebben. Most express a change of state (worden, beginnen, stoppen, gebeuren, veranderen) or are simply learned as fixed exceptions (zijn, gaan, komen, blijven). Learn these as a set.

Change of state — begin, stop, happen, change

Verbs describing a change from one state to another take zijn: beginnen (to start), stoppen (to stop/quit), gebeuren (to happen), veranderen (to change), trouwen (to marry), slagen (to pass), zakken (to fail), stijgen (to rise), dalen (to fall).

Movement A → B — hebben or zijn?

Verbs of movement (lopen, fietsen, zwemmen, rijden) take hebben when there is no destination — the focus is on the activity. They take zijn when the sentence names a destination (movement from A to B).

Examples

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