Adverbs: net, pas, al, nu, toen, straks, vroeg(er), laat,
ooit, binnenkort
Ik ben net wakker. I just woke up.
De winkel is pas geopend. The store recently opened.
De bus komt pas over een uur. The bus will not come for
another hour.
De bus is er al. The bus is already here.
Moeten we dit nu doen? Do we have to do this now?
Toen ging ik naar huis. Then I went home.
Tot straks. See you later.
Erik staat altijd vroeg op. Erik always gets up early.
De bus is vandaag te laat. The bus is late today.
Vroeger kon je in dit meer zwemmen. You used to be able to swim
in this lake.
Ooit wil ik weer eens naar Engeland. Some day I want to go to
England again.
Binnenkort ga ik verhuizen. I will soon move.
Note: Most of these adverbs speak for themselves and have equivalents
in English. Some are more difficult to translate literally into English, such
as pas. As you notice in the examples, this word can have different mean-
ings depending on the context (either ‘recently’ or ‘not until’, ‘not for’).
A word about straks: It means ‘later, but on the same day’. Saying tot straks
‘see you later’ means you will see the other person again the same day.
Otherwise you’d have to say tot morgen ‘see you tomorrow’, tot volgende
week ‘see you next week’, tot de volgende keer ‘see you next time’, etc.
Odds and ends
1 Dutch uses vorig for ‘last’, and volgend for ‘next’. These words follow
the rules for adjective endings. Examples: vorig jaar ‘last year’, vorige
week ‘last week’, volgend jaar ‘next year’, volgende week ‘next week’.
2 When something happens every day or week, we say elke dag, elke week;
when it happens with intermissions, we say, for example, om de andere
dag ‘every other day’, om de drie weken ‘every third week’.
3 Talking about centuries, we use ordinal numbers: de twintigste eeuw
‘the twentieth century’, de negentiende eeuw ‘the nineteenth century’.
4 Talking about decades, there are a few options: de zeventiger jaren ‘the
seventies’, de jaren vijftig ‘the fifties’.
36
5
Telling the
time