Regular verbs can have [long](#/lesson/SpellingAndPronunciation.09) or [short](#/lesson/SpellingAndPronunciation.13) vowels. Recall, from the chapter about spelling and pronunciation (see [rules](#/lesson/SpellingAndPronunciation.19) for keeping vowels long/short):
long vowel infinitives require long vowel stems
Take, for example, _maken_ (to make).
Following the rule for deriving the crude stem from the infinitive (stem = infinitive minus -en ), we would get:
This is a short vowel (a single, closed vowel).
To keep it long, we need to add an extra _a_. The stem then becomes:
_ma a k_.
Examples of similar verbs are:
infinitive | english | crude stem | stem
nemen | to take | nem | ne e m
lopen | to walk | lop | lo o p
leren | to learn | ler | le e r
koken | to cook | kok | ko o k
breken | to break | brek | bre e k
vuren | to shoot | vur | vu u r
horen | to hear | hor | ho o r
weten | to know | wet | we e t