Dutch Modal Verbs: Kunnen, Moeten, Mogen, Willen & Zullen

Modale werkwoorden

Modal verbs (modale werkwoorden / hulpwerkwoorden) are helper verbs. They don't usually stand alone; they work together with another verb. They add meaning like necessity, ability, permission, intention, or future.

Dutch uses six common modal verbs: moeten, willen, kunnen, mogen, zullen, and hoeven. Each one changes how your sentence sounds:

Verb	Meaning	What it expresses	Example
moeten	must / have to	obligation or necessity	Ik moet vroeg opstaan. Ik moet vroeg opstaan. - I have to get up early.
kunnen	can / be able to	ability or possibility	Zij kan goed zingen. Zij kan goed zingen. - She can sing well.
willen	want	desire or willingness	Wij willen koffie drinken. Wij willen koffie drinken. - We want to drink coffee.
mogen	may / allowed to	asking or granting permission	Mag ik hier zitten? Mag ik hier zitten? - May I sit here?
zullen	shall / will	future tense	Hij zal later komen. Hij zal later komen. - He will come later.
hoeven	need to (neg. only)	something is not necessary	Ik hoef niet te koken. Ik hoef niet te koken. - I do not need to cook.

Modal Verb Conjugation

In the present tense, modal verbs are mostly irregular. So you usually cannot apply the regular stem + t rule. The good news is that many singular forms are short and repeat, and the plural forms are usually the infinitive.

A practical way to learn this table: first memorize the ik form, then the plural forms (wij / jullie / zij), and then the extra alternatives for jij (and sometimes u).

	moeten	kunnen	willen	mogen	zullen	hoeven
ik	moet	kan	wil	mag	zal	hoef
jij	moet	kan / kunt	wil / wilt	mag	zal / zult	hoeft
hij/zij/u	moet	kan	wil	mag	zal	hoeft
wij	moeten	kunnen	willen	mogen	zullen	hoeven
jullie	moeten	kunnen	willen	mogen	zullen	hoeven
zij (pl.)	moeten	kunnen	willen	mogen	zullen	hoeven

How to Actually Build a Sentence with a Modal Verb

Picture a Dutch modal sentence as a verb sandwich. The conjugated modal — moet, kan, wil, mag, or zal — sits in second position, right after the subject, while the second verb, the one naming the real action, travels all the way to the end of the clause as a bare infinitive. So "Ik moet vroeg opstaan" is really "I must — early — get-up," not "I must get up early" the way English keeps its two verb-parts side by side.

When you build a sentence yourself, work from the outside in: choose your subject and conjugated modal first ("Wij willen…"), drop the extra information — an object like "koffie," a time word, "niet" — into the middle, and only at the very end add the second verb, unchanged, in its infinitive form ("…koffie drinken"). The modal is the only verb that ever changes form — the second verb always stays a plain infinitive and always moves to the end.

Mistakes English Speakers Make

English keeps "can/want/must" glued to the very next verb, so learners copy that habit in Dutch and forget that the second verb follows its own rules and takes its own place in the sentence. These four slips come up most often at A0–A1.

Lesson 10 Practice

Choose one activity below. Quizzes use vocabulary from Lessons 1, 2, and 3.