Dutch Grammar • Stem rule I http://www.dutchgrammar.com/en/?n=Verbs.

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Stem rule I

By Bieneke Berendsen

Regular verbs can have long or short vowels. Recall, from the chapter about spelling and
pronunciation (see rules for keeping vowels long/short):

Take, for example, maken (to make).

Following the rule for deriving the crude stem from the infinitive (stem = infinitive minus -en ), we
would get:

mak
This is a short vowel (a single, closed vowel).
To keep it long, we need to add an extra a. The stem then becomes:

maak.
Examples of similar verbs are:

infinitive english crude stem stem

nemen to take nem neem
lopen to walk lop loop
leren to learn ler leer
koken to cook kok kook
breken to break brek breek
vuren to shoot vur vuur
horen to hear hor hoor
weten to know wet weet

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