Impersonal Prepositional Passives
When giving a status update on a community project, you often do not need to specify who is doing the work. In English, you might say "It is being worked on."
In Dutch, when a verb has a fixed preposition (like werken aan - to work on, or praten over - to talk about), you form this subjectless passive using er, the auxiliary verb worden, the preposition, and the past participle.
| The community center is old, but it is being worked on. | Het wijkcentrum is oud, maar er wordt aan gewerkt. |
Notice how the sentence focuses purely on the action taking place.
If you want to emphasize a specific topic (like saying "THAT is being talked about"), you can replace er with daar:
| The neighborhood council is looking for support, so that is being talked about. | De wijkraad zoekt draagvlak, dus daar wordt over gepraat. |
When adding adverbs like veel (a lot) or nu (now), place them between er and the preposition:
| Greening is important, so it is being thought about a lot. | De vergroening is belangrijk, dus er wordt veel over nagedacht. |
| The paving was bad, so it is now being looked at. | De bestrating was slecht, dus er wordt nu naar gekeken. |
In questions or sentences starting with something other than the subject, standard inversion applies: the finite verb (wordt) comes before er:
| Is the playground equipment already finished, or is it still being waited for? | Is het speeltoestel al klaar, of wordt er nog op gewacht? |
Finally, in a subclause (such as after conjunctions like tenzij or waarom), the verbs get pushed to the end of the sentence, after the preposition:
| We are closing the community center, unless it is being paid for. | We sluiten het wijkcentrum, tenzij er voor wordt betaald. |
| Greening is important. I asked why it is not being talked about. | De vergroening is belangrijk. Ik vroeg waarom er niet over wordt gepraat. |