Strictly speaking, we only have two tenses: The present and the past. We do, however, define a few 'semi-tenses' by an interaction of tense (present or past), aspect (momentary or ongoing), and mood (is it a factual or a hypothetical statement?).
This gives us a list of eight basic 'tenses'.
- present | ik werk | I work
- simple past | ik werkte | I worked
- perfect | ik heb gewerkt | I have worked
- pluperfect | ik had gewerkt | I had worked
- future | ik zal werken | I will work
- conditional | ik zou werken | I would work
- future perfect | ik zal hebben gewerkt | I will have worked
- conditional perfect | ik zou hebben gewerkt | I would have worked
For each tense, you will have to learn two things:
- Its conjugation (I work, he works, etc.)
- Its application: When do we use the tense?
Another common 'tense' -not mentioned here- is the continuous (or 'progressive'): _ik ben aan het lopen_ (I am walking). This will be discussed in the next chapter, under [_aan het_ continuous](#/lesson/Verbs.Ot02) and [_te_ continuous](#/lesson/Verbs.Ot04).
The [personal pronouns](#/lesson/Pronouns.Ps01) are:
1st singular | I | ik
2nd singular | you | je/u
3rd singular | he/she/it | hij/ze/het
1st plural | we | we
2nd plural | you | jullie
3rd plural | they | ze
As in English, in Dutch we have regular and irregular verbs.
Regular verbs all follow the same conjugation. To conjugate a regular verb, we need to know the stem. Therefore, before we move on to the actual conjugation of a verb, we need to know how to derive the stem from an infinitive.