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Practice: Perfect Tense

Praten over het verleden — Perfectum

The perfectum is the main past tense in spoken Dutch — use it to say what you have done or did. It is formed with the auxiliary hebben or zijn plus a past participle at the end of the sentence.
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Key rules for Perfect Tense

Sentence structure — auxiliary at position 2, participle at the end

The auxiliary verb (hebben or zijn) sits in position 2. Everything else — objects, adverbs, time expressions — slots in between, and the past participle comes last.

Hebben or zijn — choosing the right auxiliary

Use zijn with verbs of motion to a destination or change of state. Use hebben with all other verbs, including most sports and hobbies that happen in one place.

Regular past participles — 't kofschip rule

Form regular past participles with ge- + stem. Add -t if the stem ends in a letter from 't kofschip (t, k, f, s, ch, p); add -d for all other stems.

Examples

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