Questions & Answers about Zijn vader werkt in de stad.
I thought zijn meant the verb to be or are. Why does it mean his here?
The word zijn has two completely different meanings in Dutch. It is the verb for to be or are, but it is also the possessive word for his. Because it comes right before the noun vader, context tells you it means his father.
Why does the verb werkt end in a t?
The subject of the sentence is Zijn vader (His father), which counts as a he. For he, she, and it subjects, regular Dutch verbs are formed by taking the stem of the verb (werk) and adding a t to the end, giving us werkt.
How do I know whether to use de or het before stad?
Stad is a de word. You usually have to memorize whether a noun gets de or het when you first learn it, but as a helpful trick, words for inhabited places and buildings almost always use de.
Why is stad spelled with a d at the end if it sounds like a t?
In Dutch, whenever a word ends in the letter d, it is pronounced as a sharp t sound. So stad sounds just like stat. If you make the word plural (steden), the d moves to the middle of the word and goes back to sounding like a normal d.