naar ... toe and ... heen: saying where to in Dutch

To show movement toward a place, Dutch uses the preposition naar (to): Ik ga naar het station. (I go to the station.) Two small words extend this: toe, which wraps around the destination (naar het station toe), and heen, which asks where to in a question (Waar ga je heen? — Where are you going?). This page sorts out both.

naar ... toe is a split wrap: naar stands before the destination and toe moves to the end of the clause. It adds a sense of motion toward something and is optional — naar on its own already means to.

1. Put naar before the destination, as usual: Ik loop naar de deur. (I walk to the door.)
2. Add toe at the end of the clause: Ik loop naar de deur toe. (I walk over to the door.)
3. If verbs pile up at the end, toe sits just before them: Ik ben naar de deur toe gelopen. (I walked over to the door.)

The wrap is especially common when the destination is a person: Kom naar me toe. (Come to me.) Hij loopt langzaam naar mij toe. (He slowly walks up to me.) Here toe behaves like a postposition — a word that trails after the phrase, sitting near the final verbs.

To ask or say where to, Dutch adds heen or naartoe to the question word waar (where); the two words split around the middle of the sentence.

• Waar ga je heen? / Waar ga je naartoe? (Where are you going?) — both are correct and mean the same.
• Waar gaan we morgen heen? (Where are we going tomorrow?) — waar stays in front, heen drops to the end.
• The pointer forms match: hierheen / hiernaartoe (to here), daarheen / daarnaartoe (to there), waarheen / waarnaartoe (to where).

heen and naartoe are interchangeable and mean the same; the choice is a matter of habit, not register. With ergens (somewhere), nergens (nowhere) and overal (everywhere) the words stay apart: ergens naartoe, nergens heen. Ga je nog ergens naartoe? (Are you going somewhere?)

• For a plain destination, naar is enough: Ik ga naar de winkel. (I go to the shop.) Add naar ... toe to stress the movement toward, or when the destination is a person: Loop naar de docent toe. (Walk over to the teacher.)
• Use heen or naartoe to say where to with a movement verb — gaan (to go), komen (to come), lopen (to walk), rijden (to drive): Waar rijden jullie heen? (Where are you driving to?)
• Compare direction with place. waar alone asks a location: Waar ben je? (Where are you?) waar ... heen asks a destination: Waar ga je heen? (Where are you going?) More on the location prepositions is on core prepositions.

English uses one word, where, for both place and direction, so English speakers say Waar ga je? and stop there. With a movement verb, Dutch normally adds heen or naartoe: Waar ga je heen?, not just Waar ga je?

Do not mix up heen with vandaan (from). heen points to a destination, vandaan points to an origin: Waar ga je heen? (Where are you going to?) versus Waar kom je vandaan? (Where do you come from?) Both trail to the end of the clause, but they mean opposite directions.