Word
De boot is geweldig. We hebben hem gehuurd.
Meaning
The boat is great. We rented it.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Questions & Answers about De boot is geweldig. We hebben hem gehuurd.
Why does the Dutch sentence use hem (him) to refer to the boat instead of a word for 'it'?
Because boot is a de word. In Dutch, nouns that take de are grammatically masculine or feminine. People usually refer back to de words as objects using hem (him/it). If it were a het word, you would use het (it).
How is the past participle gehuurd formed?
It comes from the infinitive verb huren (to rent). First, you find the stem by dropping the -en and adjusting the vowels, which gives us huur. Then, you add the prefix ge- and the suffix -d to get gehuurd.
Why does gehuurd end in -d rather than -t?
This is where the famous 't kofschip rule comes in! You look at the last letter of the verb stem (huur ends in 'r'). Because the letter 'r' is not one of the consonants in 't kofschip, the past participle ends with a -d.
Why is gehuurd at the very end of the second sentence?
In the Dutch present perfect tense, the helping verb (here, hebben) stays in the normal second position, but the past participle (gehuurd) is kicked all the way to the end of the sentence.