Dutch irregular verbs: the 100 most common, with their past forms

Download the 100 verbs as a spreadsheet (CSV). It opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers, and a flashcard app such as Anki can import it. How to make the regular past and the perfect, with ’t kofschip, is on Dutch verb conjugation; this page is the list of verbs that do not follow those rules.

What makes a Dutch verb irregular

A regular Dutch verb makes its past with -te or -de and its participle with ge- and -t or -d: werken, werkte, gewerkt. An irregular verb does something else. Dutch grammar books sort them into three groups.

• Strong verbs (sterke werkwoorden) change their vowel. The past gets a new vowel and no ending, and the participle usually ends in -en: schrijven, schreef, geschreven; drinken, dronk, gedronken. Most verbs in the table are strong, and most of those follow one of a few vowel patterns.
• Irregular verbs (onregelmatige werkwoorden) change more than the vowel. Kopen, kocht, gekocht and denken, dacht, gedacht change the vowel and the consonant and still end in -t. Zijn, was, geweest; hebben, had, gehad; gaan, ging, gegaan and the modal verbs change almost everything: kunnen, kon; moeten, moest; mogen, mocht; willen, with wilde or wou; and zullen, zou, which has no participle. They are the most common verbs of all, so they open the table.
• Mixed verbs (gemengde werkwoorden) are half strong, half regular. Vragen has a strong past and a regular participle: vroeg, gevraagd. Lachen does it the other way round: lachte, gelachen.

A verb with a prefix takes the forms of its base verb: verkopen, verkocht like kopen, bekijken, bekeek like kijken, vertrekken, vertrok like trekken. That includes the inseparable verbs with over- and voor-: overlijden, overleed, overleden like lijden, voorkomen, voorkwam, voorkomen like komen. Where ge- goes in a verb with a prefix is explained on Dutch verb conjugation. The table lists the prefixed verbs that are common in their own right, such as begrijpen and verdwijnen.

A regular past with an irregular participle

One small group of mixed verbs is easy to miss, because its past is regular and only the participle is strong: lachen, lachte, gelachen; heten, heette, geheten; bakken, bakte, gebakken; wassen, waste, gewassen; scheiden, scheidde, gescheiden. They are not in the table, which ranks the verbs with an irregular past. By frequency, two of them would make the top 100: heten (to be called) between sterven and besluiten, and lachen (to laugh) between bezoeken and zingen.

• De vrouw heette Ria. The woman was called Ria. (Saldo te laag, A2)
• Zijn collega’s hadden om zijn accent gelachen, en daarom zei hij al 60 jaar zo weinig mogelijk. His colleagues had laughed at his accent, and that is why for 60 years he had said as little as possible. (Het briefje in het bibliotheekboek, B1)

The 100 most common Dutch irregular verbs

The tables go in order of frequency, with the ranks of the 1,000 most common Dutch words: zijn is the fourth most common word in Dutch, verslaan (to defeat) is word 1,162. Each row gives the infinitive, the simple past singular (ik, jij, u, hij, zij) and plural (wij, jullie, zij), the past participle, the auxiliary of the perfect and the English meaning. Where two forms are both correct, both are given: wilde or wou.

Rows 1 to 91 are all among the 1,000 most common Dutch words, and all 100 are among the 1,200.

Verbs 1 to 25

All 25 are among the 110 most common Dutch words, so learn these first. They include zijn and hebben, the five modal verbs (kunnen, zullen, moeten, willen, mogen) and gaan, komen, zien, zeggen, geven, nemen.

Scroll sideways to see the whole table

Verbs 26 to 50

Verbs of every day: lezen, schrijven, eten, kopen, lopen, rijden. Here come the first verbs whose auxiliary depends on the sentence: lopen and rijden take zijn when the sentence says where to.

Scroll sideways to see the whole table

Verbs 51 to 75

Many verbs here have a prefix and follow their base verb: verkopen like kopen, bekijken like kijken, vertrekken like trekken, ontvangen like vangen.

Scroll sideways to see the whole table

Verbs 76 to 100

From row 92 on, the verbs rank between 1,000 and 1,200 among all Dutch words: bespreken, vergelijken, verbieden. Bevinden almost always comes with zich: Het station bevindt zich in het centrum, the station is in the center of town.

Scroll sideways to see the whole table

All 100 verbs are also in the spreadsheet (CSV), in the same order.

Notes on the table

• Zullen has no participle, so it has no perfect.
• Willen has two correct pasts: wilde and wou, plural wilden and wouden.
• Voorkomen is two verbs. With the stress on ko it means to prevent and is the row in the table: voorkwam, heeft voorkomen. With the stress on voor it means to occur and is separable: Dat komt vaak voor, kwam voor, is voorgekomen. Its row is this high because the two share their forms.
• Bestaan and ontstaan take the forms of staan: bestond, ontstond. But bestaan (to exist) takes hebben and ontstaan (to come into being) takes zijn.

Vowel patterns that help

Strong verbs are less random than they look. Most of them follow a pattern of three vowels, one each for the infinitive, the past and the participle, and the verbs of one pattern are easier to learn together. Eight patterns cover 73 of the 100 verbs in the table.

Scroll sideways to see the whole table

In most verbs the past plural just adds -en, and the spelling follows the same rules as the stem of a verb on Dutch verb conjugation: one letter for a long vowel in an open syllable and two in a closed one, and an f or s at the end of the singular often becomes a v or z in the plural: bleef, bleven; koos, kozen; gaf, gaven; las, lazen. In the e, a patterns, and in lag, zat, zag and kwam, the short a of the singular becomes a long one in the plural: gaf, gaven; nam, namen; lag, lagen; kwam, kwamen.

Two smaller groups are worth knowing too. Lopen, liep, gelopen and roepen, riep, geroepen go back to their first vowel in the participle; helpen, hielp, geholpen, sterven, stierf, gestorven and ontwerpen, ontwierp, ontworpen end with an o. The rest, such as zijn, hebben, komen, doen, zien, zeggen, weten and the modal verbs, have to be learned one by one, but they are also the verbs you meet most.

Hebben or zijn with these verbs

Being irregular says nothing about the auxiliary of the perfect. Of the 100 verbs, 76 take hebben, 15 always take zijn, and 8 take one or the other depending on the sentence; zullen has no perfect. The general rule, with more examples, is on Dutch verb conjugation.

• Always zijn: zijn, worden, gaan, komen, blijven, beginnen, vallen, blijken, overlijden, ontstaan, sterven, verdwijnen, verschijnen, vertrekken, stijgen. Most of them are about movement or a change: De trein is vertrokken. Het water is gestegen.
• Zijn with a destination, hebben without: lopen, rijden, vliegen, springen and trekken. Ik ben naar Rome gevlogen, I flew to Rome; but Ik heb nog nooit gevlogen, I have never flown. Schieten takes zijn when it means to move fast: Hij is de kamer uit geschoten, he shot out of the room.
• Breken: hebben when someone breaks something (Ik heb mijn arm gebroken), zijn when something breaks (Het glas is gebroken).
• Vergeten: zijn when you no longer know something (Ik ben zijn naam vergeten). When you left something behind or did not do something, both are correct: Ik heb mijn paraplu vergeten or Ik ben mijn paraplu vergeten.
• Staan, zitten, liggen and hangen take hebben in the Netherlands (Ik heb een uur in de rij gestaan); in Belgium you also hear zijn. Hebben is correct in both countries.

Three sentences from the free texts show the difference:

• Hij had deze trap tien keer op en neer gelopen, en de sleutel van de brievenbus had niet gepast. He had walked up and down these stairs ten times, and the key to the mailbox had not fit. (lopen without a destination: hebben. De borg, B1)
• Na de scheiding waren ze bij hem gebleven. After the divorce they had stayed with him. (blijven: always zijn. Het pakje voor nummer 12, A2)
• ‘Is de vuilniswagen mij vergeten?’ denkt hij. “Has the garbage truck forgotten me?” he thinks. (vergeten with zijn. De grijze bak, A1)

Irregular verbs in the free texts

The free texts on this site use these verbs the way Dutch does. Each sentence below is quoted word for word from its text.

• Ze hield zijn kaart tegen haar apparaat en las wat erop stond. She held his card against her device and read what was on it. (houden, hield; lezen, las; staan, stond. Saldo te laag, A2)
• Hij bleef nog even in de deur staan, maar zij liep al terug naar haar eigen deur. He stayed in the doorway a moment longer, but she was already walking back to her own door. (blijven, bleef: ij, ee, ee; lopen, liep. Het pakje voor nummer 12, A2)
• Toen ze eindelijk om de hoek kwamen, reed de bus net weg. When they finally came around the corner, the bus was just pulling away. (komen, kwamen; rijden, reed. Storing, A2)
• Ze kocht kaas, brood en een bos tulpen voor op tafel. Daarna dronk ze koffie op het terras van een café aan het water. She bought cheese, bread and a bunch of tulips for the table. Then she drank coffee on the patio of a café by the water. (kopen, kocht: -cht; drinken, dronk: i, o, o. De verloren portemonnee, B1)
• Bij de kaaskraam en op het terras vroeg ze of iemand een portemonnee had gevonden. At the cheese stand and on the patio she asked if anyone had found a wallet. (vragen, vroeg, a strong past; vinden, gevonden. De verloren portemonnee, B1)
• In de middag van 1 februari steeg het water opnieuw, en toen braken er nog meer dijken. On the afternoon of 1 February the water rose again, and then even more dikes broke. (stijgen, steeg: ij, ee, ee; breken, braken. De watersnood van 1953, B1)
• In Izmir kochten haar collega's op haar verjaardag altijd een taart, en om tien uur zong iedereen voor haar. In Izmir her colleagues always bought a cake on her birthday, and at ten o'clock everyone sang for her. (kochten, the plural of kocht; zingen, zong. Trakteren, B1)

How to learn Dutch irregular verbs

Say each verb as one line of three forms, out loud: lopen, liep, gelopen. When the perfect takes zijn, say it with the participle: gaan, ging, is gegaan. Learn the first 25 before the rest, then one table at a time, and take the verbs of one vowel pattern together. The spreadsheet imports into a flashcard app such as Anki.

A list only takes you so far: the forms stay when you meet them in stories. Read texts told in the past at your level and notice the verbs. The free A2 texts and B1 texts have many stories in the simple past, and Dutch grammar for readers has the twelve rules that carry the rest of a sentence.

Where the list comes from

The order and the ranks are those of the 1,000 most common Dutch words. They come from wordfreq, a free frequency list by Robyn Speer that counts Dutch in Wikipedia, film and TV subtitles, news, websites and social media. A frequency list counts word forms, like loopt, liep and gelopen, so the forms were grouped into words, like lopen, with UD Dutch Alpino, a collection of Dutch sentences annotated by hand. The verb forms come from the list this site checks its texts against, which was checked against the list of strong and irregular verbs in the ANS (Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst), the reference grammar of Dutch. The English meanings were written for this page.

Some verbs share a form with another word, so the order is close, not exact: reden is also the noun reason, gevangene is a prisoner. Five verbs are left out because most of their count belongs to another word: varen (voer is also animal feed), ervaren (mostly the adjective, experienced), treden (mostly de treden, steps, and optreden), betrekken (mostly betrokken, involved) and verdenken (mostly de verdachte, the suspect).

You may share and adapt the list, also for your classes, under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license: credit wordfreq (Robyn Speer) and Dutch Readers, and share your version under the same license.

Read next

Het pakje voor nummer 12 is an A2 story told in the past, about a woman who keeps taking in packages for a neighbor who is simply at home, with a glossary. Many of its verbs come from the first 50 rows of the table: kwam, bracht, bleef, liep, kreeg, dacht, schreef. Read it once for the story, then again and find the infinitive of every past form. At B1, De verloren portemonnee does the same with a wallet lost in Leiden.