Liedje van de dag: Blankenberge

This might be a perfect song to practice the Flemish pronunciation of words. Hugo Matthysen is a Flemish columnist with a very recognisable sence of humour. Again, this song is in "clean" Dutch, but the parlando might be extra helpful. In this song, Blankenberge, he pronounces every sentence syllable per syllable. Maybe a bit fast for the beginner, but those who have reached a somewhat intermediate understanding of Dutch can use the lyrics as a good pronunciation exercise.

"je gaat" vs "ga je"

Conjugating a verb in Dutch is not too difficult, but you will need to understand the following principals: find the stem of the verb, that will be the first person singular, add a 't' to it to get the second and third person singular and add 'en' to the stem to get all the plural forms.

Let's take an easy one: werken (put your mouse on top of the word to see the translation)

werken	voorbeeld
ik werk	ik werk als receptionist
jij/je werkt	jij werkt thuis
hij/zij/het werkt	Mark? Hij werkt vandaag niet.
wij werken	wij werken op het postkantoor
jullie werken	Dag collega's, jullie werken hard!
zij werken	Jan en Bart, zij werken op maandag