Learn how to ask "Who?"
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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 ask "When" questions in Dutch. |
| This time, we are going to ask "Who" questions. |
| Imagine you want to ask your friend who the girl sitting behind him is. |
| In this situation, the question you could ask is Wie is zij? “Who is she?” |
| [slowly] Wie is zij? |
| So let’s break down this answer. |
| First we had- |
| Wie, which is the basic translation of "Who" in Dutch. |
| Then comes is which is "is", the conjugated present tense form of the third person of the verb zijn, which we have already studied. |
| Zij means "she." |
| Altogether, it is Wie is zij? |
| So in Dutch, "Who" is mainly translated as wie. |
| For example, if you want to ask "Who are these people?" You will say Wie zijn deze mensen? |
| As in English, the question word “who” is placed in the first position here, and is followed by the verb and then the subject. |
| Wie only works for people, so you can't use it to ask information about things or places. Wie can also be used to ask who did something, for example. |
| If you are in a museum for instance, you can ask Wie heeft dit schilderij geschilderd? This means "Who painted this painting?" |
| Another formula with wie that is used a lot is wiens? It’s wie with –ns after it. In this case, the meaning is different, as it can be translated to "Whose." |
| So if you want to ask "Whose pen is this?" you will have to say Wiens pen is dit? |
| If we break down this question, it is- |
| Wiens, which is "whose" |
| Pen which is “pen”. |
| Then we have is which is the present tense of the verb zijn, which you should know. |
| And finally, dit, which means "this". |
| You can also use the word wie if you want to know who an item is for. We use the same word wie, but you place voor, “for” in front of it. So it becomes "voor wie." |
| For example, you can ask "For whom is this piece of cake?" Voor wie is dit stuk taart? |
| Now it’s time for Gabriella’s Insights. |
| If someone that you didn't expect is knocking at your door in the Netherlands, the common question you can ask is Wie is daar? before opening the door. |
| This literally means "Who is there?" |
| However, it’s not all that common to ask this. Usually Dutch people will say “hallo?” with a rising intonation to indicate that it’s a question. |
| In this lesson, we learned how to correctly use the word for "Who", which is wie in Dutch. |
| The next lesson will be the last one in this Absolute Beginner series. |
| We will deal with the last common question word waarom, so I’ll be waiting for you in the next Nederlands in 3 minuten lesson. |
| Tot ziens! |
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