Person and Number
In Dutch there are two grammatical numbers (getallen) (as in English): singular (enkelvoud) and plural (meervoud) and three grammatical persons (personen) (as in English). They are determined as followed:
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| First person | ik ('k) | wij (we) |
| Second Person | jij (je); gij (ge); u (U) | jullie; gij (ge); u (U) |
| Third Person | hij (ie); zij (ze); het ('t) | zij (ze) |
Ik, wij, jij, gij, u, U, jullie, hij, zij, and het are the stressed forms, 'k, we, je, ge, ie, ze and 't are the non-stressed forms, U is the polite form (see Dutch declension). Because the conjugation pattern is different or equal for some persons, the conjugation is given by pronoun and not by grammatical person.
There are five forms of each verb in each tense:
- a form for ik ('k) (the pronoun jij (je) follows the same pattern as ik in the present simple if it follows the verb, see t-rules).
- a form for jij (je) (the pronouns u and U can also follow this form)
- a form for gij (ge) (the pronouns u, U and jullie can also follow this form)
- a form for hij (ie), zij (ze), het ('t) and u (U) (= a form for the third person)
- a plural form
Read more about this topic: Dutch Conjugation
Famous quotes containing the words person and/or number:
“The goal in raising one’s child is to enable him, first, to discover who he wants to be, and then to become a person who can be satisfied with himself and his way of life. Eventually he ought to be able to do in his life whatever seems important, desirable, and worthwhile to him to do; to develop relations with other people that are constructive, satisfying, mutually enriching; and to bear up well under the stresses and hardships he will unavoidably encounter during his life.”
—Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)
“Even in ordinary speech we call a person unreasonable whose outlook is narrow, who is conscious of one thing only at a time, and who is consequently the prey of his own caprice, whilst we describe a person as reasonable whose outlook is comprehensive, who is capable of looking at more than one side of a question and of grasping a number of details as parts of a whole.”
—G. Dawes Hicks (1862–1941)