Learning Dutch can be quite a challenge.

For some it’s easy, for others it’s much harder.

By the way, here I give arguments for both cases, Dutch being easy, or Dutch is hard to learn.

One thing is evident, for all people who are learning Dutch: you are going to make mistakes when you start speaking it. And let me tell you. This is a good thing. The only way to learn Dutch is to try, to make mistakes and then to learn from your mistakes.

In this blog I want to take a look at typical mistakes when you start speaking Dutch.  

First, I will show you some examples. Can you see what’s wrong with them?

5 Typical mistakes in Dutch

1. Deze boek heb ik al drie keer gelezen.

(I have already read this book three times)

2. Op maandag ik ga naar mijn werk.

(On Monday I go to work)

3. Ik bel je op, omdat ik heb een vraag.

(I call you because I have a question)

4. Ik meeneem mijn tas naar het park.

(I bring my bag to the park)

5. Zij hebben vorige week naar Den Haag verhuisd.

(They moved to Den Haag last week)         

What’s wrong with these sentences?

You might not see what is incorrect in the 5 examples. That is not a problem!

The mistakes in the sentences are grammatically incorrect, but if you said them when talking in Dutch with Dutch people, they would probably understand you!

So, let’s look at what is incorrect here.

1. Deze boek heb ik al drie keer gelezen. (I read this book three times already)

One of the most difficult aspects of Dutch is the article. De / het and all the consequences of these two words. Here, the article for boek is ‘het’. The demonstrative pronoun for ‘het’ is dit or dat.

Dit boek heb ik al drie keer gelezen

In this video you see students of the summer school getting quizzed about this, here you can find more information about when it is ‘de’ or ‘het’. 

2. Op maandag ik ga naar mijn werk (On Monday I go to work)

Also a very common mistake when you start learning Dutch: inversion of the subject (ik) and verb (ga) at the beginning of the sentence after an indication of time (Monday).

Correct: Op maandag ga ik naar mijn werk.

You can find more information here.

3. Ik bel je op, omdat ik heb een vraag ( I call you because I have a question)

If you use ‘omdat’, a bell should ring in your head. There is something up with this word. This conjunction makes the verb go to the end of the sentence.

Ik bel je op, omdat ik een vraag heb.

4. Ik meeneem mijn tas naar het park ( I bring my bag to the park)

In Dutch we have something that is called a separable verb. In short this means that a verb can be divided into two parts. In this case its meenemen. The last part of the infinitive goes first, and the first part at the end of the sentence.

Ik neem mijn tas naar het park mee.

5. Zij hebben vorige week naar Den Haag verhuisd. (They moved to Den Haag last week)

This sentence is in, what we call, the present perfect. The auxiliary verb in most cases is ‘hebben’. But not always. An example is the verb verhuizen.

Ze zijn vorige week naar Den Haag verhuisd.

Do you want to learn more about Dutch grammar?

These 5 mistakes show problems almost all students have when learning Dutch. In my online courses we created a program in which you will learn all the important parts of the Dutch grammar and more!

Bart de Pau
online Dutch teacher & founder of the Dutch Summer School & Dutch Winter School