At its heart, a simple Dutch sentence follows the same logic as an English one. It uses a Subject-Verb-Object, or SVO, structure. The subject is who or what does the action, the verb is the action itself, and the object is what receives the action. This familiar pattern is your starting point for building clear statements.

Let’s look at a simple example:

Here, 'De man' is the subject, 'leest' is the verb, and 'het boek' is the object. It's straightforward. Here are a couple more to see the pattern in action.

Of course, sentences often contain more than just a subject, verb, and object. We add details about when, how, and where an action happens. In Dutch, these details also follow a specific order: Time, then Manner, then Place (TMP).

Let's break that down:

• Time: When did the action happen? (e.g., vandaag - today, morgen - tomorrow, om twee uur - at two o'clock)
• Manner: How did the action happen? (e.g., snel - quickly, langzaam - slowly, met de trein - by train)
• Place: Where did the action happen? (e.g., hier - here, in het park - in the park, naar school - to school)

So, how do we combine the SVO and TMP rules? The TMP elements usually come after the main verb. The most common structure for a simple Dutch sentence looks like this:

You won't always use every single element in every sentence, but when you do use them, this is the order they follow. Let's see how this works in practice. The table below breaks down a few sentences into their parts.

Notice in the last example, there's no 'Manner' or 'Object'. You just skip the parts you don't need, but the elements you do use still follow the TMP order. Mastering this SVO-TMP structure is the key to forming clear, natural-sounding sentences in Dutch.