Learn how to use the verb "to do"
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| Hallo allemaal! Ik heet Gabriella. Hi everybody! I’m Gabriella. |
| Welcome to DutchPod101.com’s “Nederlands in 3 minuten”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Dutch. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to use the verb gaan, which means "to go" in Dutch. |
| In this lesson, we will continue our series dedicated to very common Dutch verbs. |
| The second verb in our series is doen, which means "to do." Doen is used quite a lot, for instance in questions. |
| So imagine someone asks you Wat ben je aan het doen? |
| That means "What are you doing?" in an informal form. |
| So if you are doing your homework, for example, you will say in Dutch Ik doe mijn huiswerk. |
| [slowly] Ik doe mijn huiswerk. |
| So let’s break down this answer. |
| First we had- |
| Ik doe which is "I am doing." |
| It is the present tense form of the verb doen, which is "to do" in the infinitive. |
| Next was mijn, which is the possessive pronoun “my” in English. Finally we had huiswerk, which is the noun for "homework". |
| Note that in Dutch, you can use the present tense form to say that you are doing nothing. |
| Just say Ik doe niets! which literally means "I am doing nothing!" |
| [slowly] Ik doe niets! |
| Let’s look at some other questions that use the verb doen. |
| Remember gaan from the previous lesson? This time, we’ll use it along with doen to form the question Wat gaan we doen? This means “What are we going to do?” |
| [slowly] Wat gaan we doen? |
| As you might remember, to direct the question at someone else, you need to change the pronoun. To ask someone “What are you going to do?” you simply switch we with je in the previous sentence. And of course, you need to use the correct conjugation of the verb gaan, which is ga. |
| Wat ga je doen? |
| [slowly] Wat ga je doen? |
| If you want to be more specific, you can ask someone what they’re doing tonight, or tomorrow, for instance. Wat ga je vanavond doen? means “What are you doing tonight?” |
| [slowly] Wat ga je vanavond doen? |
| As you can see, the sentence is exactly the same as Wat ga je doen? We’ve only added vanavond, which means “tonight”. |
| You could also say Wat ga je morgen doen? “What are you doing tomorrow?” |
| Morgen means “tomorrow”. And you can simply replace this word with any other time phrase. |
| Now it’s time for Gabriella’s Insights. |
| If you want to go out in the Netherlands, you could ask your friend Wat ga je doen vanavond? It means “What are you doing tonight?” |
| As you can see, in Dutch you can place the time, for instance vanavond, both before and after the verb! |
| In this lesson, we learned how to use the verb doen in different contexts, and I’m sure it will help you a lot! |
| Next time, we’ll learn another very useful and romantic verb, houden van. |
| Do you know what this Dutch verb means? |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next Nederlands in 3 minuten lesson. |
| Tot ziens! |
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