ABSTRACT
Dutch verbs can be weak, strong, mixed or irregular; modal auxiliary verbs and zijn (to be) and hebben (to have) can be seen as belonging to separate categories again.
Weak verbs are simply regular verbs, the term ‘weak’ having been invented by Jacob Grimm and being peculiar to Germanic languages; don’t look for any real logic in the terms weak and strong here. Weak verbs are those that form their past tenses by the addition of a dental suffix, as is the case in English: compare ‘worked’ (with a ‘t’ sound) – werkte, gewerkt, ‘lived’ (with a ‘d’ sound) – leefde, geleefd. English says ‘t’ and ‘d’ but only writes ‘d’, whereas Dutch says ‘t’ and ‘d’ and writes them accordingly.
