Pijnstiller — Suzan: Dutch vocabulary & story · Verbomatico

A2+

Pijnstiller

Suzan & Freek

Language: Dutch
Released: 2026
Genre: pop
Level: A2+
Difficulty score: 636
Special: New Release
Duration: 2:51

How to study this song

The card for “Pijnstiller” is built from 53 study entries at A2+: 13 Dutch words, 14 adjectives and 26 verb forms. The glossary is the place to begin — gordijnen and stukje are the song’s keywords. It is unusually descriptive — 14 adjectives alongside 13 everyday words — so expect colour rather than plot. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.

The words of this song, in several languages

Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.

Vocabulary

NL	EN	ES	IT	FR	PT	DE
gordijnen	curtains	cortinas	tende	rideaux	cortinas	Vorhänge
stukje	little bit	trocito	pezzetto	petit bout	bocadinho	Stückchen

This card holds 11 more words. You meet them when you play the song.

Adjectives

NL	EN	ES	IT

What this song teaches you

Level · A2+

Vocabulary words: 13
Adjectives: 14
Word combos: 11
Expressions: 15
Verb forms: 26
Quiz questions: 35

Background

About the song

«Pijnstiller» («Painkiller») is a Dutch-language ballad by the pop duo Suzan & Freek, released digitally on 1 October 2026. It is the title track and the third single of their fourth studio album, also called «Pijnstiller», which the duo announced the same week for release on 13 November 2026. The album has ten songs, two of which were already known: the earlier singles «Niemand» and «Halverwege».

To understand the song, it helps to know the year behind it. In May 2025 Suzan Stortelder and Freek Rikkerink, who are a couple as well as a duo, announced that Freek had been diagnosed with lung cancer that had spread and could not be cured. They stopped all activities and cancelled their remaining concerts. A few weeks later he began life-extending treatment, and in June 2025 they returned to the stage. In November 2025 their first child, a son called Sef, was born. In May 2026 they played ten sold-out concerts at the GelreDome stadium in Arnhem.

The duo describe the new album as a summary of the past year and a half: love, a new life, beautiful moments and hard days. In interviews Freek has said that music worked for them like a painkiller during that time — a place to fall back on and a way to put words to feelings for which ordinary talk was not enough. Suzan called the title track a somewhat heavier song about difficult moments, while stressing that the album also tells of becoming parents. According to the duo, some songs were written simply to process what was happening, and it was not always their plan to release them.

The song itself is written to someone close who is going through a dark time. It describes a person who stays indoors, keeps busy on the outside but feels frozen inside, and who is usually the one who comforts everybody else. Now the roles are reversed: the singer offers to carry part of the weight. The chorus speaks of those days when everything seems to give way and you no longer recognise yourself, and answers with a simple promise to stay close and soften the pain. The second verse remembers a morning that felt briefly normal again and admits a painful truth: you cannot heal someone else's heart, however much you would like to.

As the Dutch chart site Top 40 put it when the song was chosen as a radio priority, you cannot take away another person's pain, but your presence can mean a great deal. Musically it is a quiet acoustic ballad, built around the two voices of the duo, which is the sound that made them famous.

Verb forms

NL	EN	ES	IT	FR	PT	DE
geopend	opened	abiertas	aperte	ouverts	abertas	geöffnet
gaat	you go	vas	vai	tu vas	vais	gehst
lopen	to walk	caminar	camminare	marcher	andar	gehen
sta	you stand	estás	stai	tu restes	estás	stehst
bent	you are	eres	sei	tu es	és	bist
troosten	to comfort	consolar	consolare	consoler	consolar	trösten
heb	you have	tienes	hai	tu as	tens	hast

This card holds 19 more verb forms. You meet them when you play the song.

Did you know?

The title is a small piece of wordplay that every learner can enjoy. «Pijnstiller» is the normal Dutch word for a painkiller, made from «pijn» («pain») and «stillen» («to soothe, to quiet»). In the chorus the same sounds come back split in two: the singer promises to make the pain «stiller», the comparative of the adjective «stil» («quiet, still»), so the pain becomes quieter. One compound noun and one adjective-plus-noun, and they sound exactly alike.

The song is full of separable verbs, a feature of Dutch that often confuses beginners. «Opstaan» («to get up»), «loslaten» («to let go») and «stilstaan» («to stand still») are split in a main clause: the verb moves forward and the little particle stays at the end. So «opstaan» becomes «sta je op» after an adverb, and «loslaten» becomes «laat niet los» as a command.

Watch the word order too. Dutch is a verb-second language: when a sentence begins with a word such as «soms» («sometimes») or «dan» («then»), the verb comes next and the subject follows it. That is why you hear «soms sta je» and «dan maak ik» rather than the order you might expect from English.

Two diminutives appear, «stukje» and «plekje». Dutch diminutives end in -je (or -tje, -pje) and always take the article «het», whatever the gender of the original word. «Een stukje lopen» means to take a short walk. «Geef het een plekje», literally «give it a little place», is a stock phrase people say after a loss, meaning roughly «come to terms with it» — and the song deliberately refuses to use it as advice.

Other useful expressions: «iemand nodig hebben» («to need someone»), where «nodig» sits between the object and the verb; «het kan me niet schelen» («I don't care»), a fixed phrase with the verb «schelen»; «diep vanbinnen» («deep down»); and «chillen», a loan from English that has become an ordinary Dutch verb. There is also one English swear word used purely for emphasis, as is common in spoken Dutch.