Breakdown of Ze kennen het woord.
kennen
to know
het woord
the word
ze
they; she (unstressed form of zij) / them (object)
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Questions & Answers about Ze kennen het woord.
Why does kennen have two 'n's in the middle?
The base of the verb is ken, which has a short 'e' sound. When we add the plural ending -en, we would normally divide the syllables like this: ke-nen. But in Dutch, a single vowel at the end of a syllable gets a long sound! To keep the short 'e' sound of the base word, we must double the consonant to 'close' that first syllable: ken-nen.
The word ze can mean "she" or "they". How do we know it means "they" in this sentence?
The verb tells us! We are using kennen, which is the plural form. If the sentence meant "She knows the word", it would use the singular form of the verb: Ze kent het woord.
I learned that the verb for "to know" is weten. Why is this sentence using kennen?
Dutch has two different verbs for "to know". You use weten when you know a fact or a piece of information (like knowing what time it is). You use kennen when you are familiar with a person, a place, or a thing, such as knowing a specific word.
Why is woord spelled with two 'o's?
It needs two 'o's to make a long vowel sound. Because the word ends in a consonant combination, it is a closed syllable. If we wrote it with just one 'o', it would be pronounced with a short 'o' sound instead.