Grammatica - loco

11
Verbs
170
stole), hij heeft gestolen (he has stolen). Note how similar the concept is
in English.
Tense
The various tenses or ‘times of action’ of both weak and strong verbs will
be looked at one by one in the following chapter. The complicated issue
of tense is twofold: first it entails the formation of the various tenses and
second, the use of those tenses. The two are dealt with separately here.
11.1
11.1.1
Formation of tenses
Present tense
De onvoltooid tegenwoordige tijd—o.t.t.
With the exception of komen, zijn, hebben and the modals, all verbs are
regular in the present tense and the irregularities of strong verbs are only
evident in the past tenses, as is the case in English too.
Example: werken ‘to work’:
Singular Plural
1 ik werk 1 wij werken
2 jij werkt 2 jullie werken, werkt
u werkt u werkt
3 hij, zij, het werkt 3 zij werken
Note: Nowadays the form in -en with jullie is overwhelmingly the more
usual; the -t ending for jullie is very seldom heard any more. In Belgium,
gij ‘you’, both a singular and a plural, is in general use and it takes the
plural -t ending. 1 The gij form is also found in Holland in older texts and
particularly in the Bible (see 8.1.2.1 (c)).
1 In some situations it is significant that gij takes the plural, not the singular -t ending
although this is not evident in case of werken here (see 11.1.2.1 and 11.7.1).