Word
De klant bezoekt ons vandaag.
Meaning
The customer is visiting us today.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of De klant bezoekt ons vandaag.
vandaag
today
bezoeken
to visit
ons
us (object)
de klant
the customer
Questions & Answers about De klant bezoekt ons vandaag.
Why do we use ons here instead of wij?
Wij (or we) means "we" and is used when "we" are the subject doing the action. Here, the customer is doing the visiting. Since "we" are the ones being visited (the object), we use ons, which translates to "us".
Could I change the word order to: De klant bezoekt vandaag ons?
It is much better to say De klant bezoekt ons vandaag. In Dutch, specific object pronouns like ons (us) almost always come right after the verb, pushing time words like vandaag (today) further back in the sentence.
The English translation says "is visiting", but the Dutch sentence just uses bezoekt. Why?
Dutch does not have a direct equivalent to the English "is doing" or "am going" form. The simple present tense bezoekt means both "visits" and "is visiting". The word vandaag (today) gives you all the context you need to know it is happening today.
How do we get the verb form bezoekt?
The dictionary form of the verb is bezoeken (to visit). Since the subject is de klant (the customer), which acts as a "he" or "she" (third-person singular), we take the stem of the verb (bezoek) and add a -t to the end, giving us bezoekt.