LESSON NOTES

Learn Dutch in Three Minutes #18

What are you going to do?

CONTENTS
2 Grammar

# 18
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GRAMMAR

The focus of this lesson is the verb "to do" in Dutch

Topic 1: How to say "to do" in Dutch

Sentence from the lesson:

Wat ben je aan het doen?

"What are you doing?"

1. If you are doing your homework, for example, you will say Ik doe mijn huiswerk.
Let's break down this answer:
Ik doe which is "I am doing." It is the present form of the verb doen, which is "to do" in
the infinitive.
mijn, which is the possessive pronoun "my" in English.
huiswerk, which is the noun for "homework."

2. Note that in Dutch, you can use the present tense form to say that you are doing
nothing right now. For example, if someone asks you what you are doing, and you
are doing nothing, you can tell them:
Ik doe niets!
"I am doing nothing!"
Here we are using the present tense form.

Topic 2: The different uses of the verb "to do"

Sentence from the lesson:

Wat gaan we doen?

"What are we going to do?"

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1. Let's look at some other questions that use the verb doen. As I said earlier there
aren't a lot of these, but that doesn't mean you won't use them a lot. Remember gaan
from the previous lesson? This time, we'll use it along with doen to form the question
Wat gaan we doen? which means "What are we going to do?" 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? If you want to be more specific, you can ask
someone what they're doing tonight, or tomorrow.
For example:
Wat ga je vanavond doen?
"What are you doing tonight?"
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." You can simply
replace this word with any other word.

Language Tip

In Dutch, you often say Wat ga je doen vanavond? when you want to go out with the particular
friend you're talking to tonight. It will sound very natural—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!

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