Word order

Now that you have a decent amount of Dutch grammar under your belt, and you’ve seen and learned how to produce a good range of sentences, let’s take a moment to talk about word order in Dutch. Even though Dutch and English are close cousins linguistically speaking, this is one area where the languages can really part ways. The most important point to keep in mind is that in simple declarative sentences, the position of main verbs is pretty much fixed; it comes second. That usually looks just like English, if the first word (or phrase) in a sentence is the subject. Take a look at these examples, where phrases are separated by vertical lines.

Ik | ga | met de trein | naar Groningen.	I’m going to Groningen by train.
Mieke en Thomas | spreken | geen Engels.	Mieke and Thomas don’t speak English.

If a sentence starts with something other than a subject, for example with an adverb or some word that is emphasized, then the verb still holds on to its second position, and the subject comes after it. The only time you see something like this in English is in constructions like Never have I seen such a thing before! But it’s completely common, and in fact required, in Dutch.

Misschien | gaat | hij | vanavond | zwemmen.	Maybe he’ll go swimming tonight.
Maandagmorgen vroeg | stapt | zij | om zes uur | op haar fiets.	Early Monday morning she gets on her bike at six o’clock.
Dat | doe | ik | nooit!	I never do THAT!

In Lesson 5, you learned that modal verbs like willen (want) and moeten (must) send the main verb to the end of the clause.

Ik | wil | met de trein | naar Groningen | gaan.	I want to go to Groningen by train.
We | moeten | morgen | werken.	We have to work tomorrow.

As you can see, it’s possible for other elements of main clauses to shift around in Dutch, but the (conjugated) verb always wants to be in the second position. In fact, depending on what you want to stress, you can say pretty much the same thing in a few different ways in Dutch, as long as the main verb doesn’t move. The following sentences all mean: They still have to wait for the bus from Utrecht for about another quarter of an hour. The first translation is neutral, the second one stresses the amount of time, and the third stresses the particular bus.

Zij | moeten | nog ongeveer een kwartier | op de bus uit Utrecht | wachten.
Nog ongeveer een kwartier | moeten | zij | op de bus uit Utrecht | wachten.
Op de bus uit Utrecht | moeten | zij | nog ongeveer een kwartier | wachten.

We’ll take a look at questions with question words in a moment, but as you can see, the word order is such that the (conjugated) verb is still in the second position.

Wanneer | komt | hij | thuis?	When does he get home?
Wat | willen | jullie | eten?	What do you (pl.) want to eat?

Way back in Lesson 1, you learned that yes-no questions are formed by putting the verb first, so they’re an exception to the verb-second generalization. Imperatives (Stop that! Leave now!) and dependent clauses (He said that he’s leaving. She asked why he left.) are also exceptions. We’ll deal with imperatives in this lesson, and we’ll come back to dependent clauses later.