Breakdown of We zijn met het vliegtuig gegaan.
zijn
to be
met
with
gaan
to go / to go off (of an alarm)
het vliegtuig
the airplane
we
we (unstressed form of wij)
Questions & Answers about We zijn met het vliegtuig gegaan.
Why does the sentence use zijn (are) instead of hebben (have) to say "We went"?
In Dutch, the present perfect tense usually uses hebben (to have). However, verbs that describe a motion from A to B use zijn (to be) as the helper verb. Because gegaan (gone) is a verb of motion, we say we zijn ... gegaan (literally: "we are ... gone") rather than "we have ... gone".
Why is it met het vliegtuig (with the airplane) instead of using a word for "by"?
In English, you travel "by" a mode of transport, but in Dutch, you always travel "with" (met) it! So, you go met de trein (by train), met de auto (by car), and here, met het vliegtuig (by airplane).
Why is gegaan at the very end of the sentence?
This is the standard Dutch word order for the present perfect tense. The helper verb (zijn) stays in the second position of the sentence, and the past participle (gegaan) gets pushed to the very end. Everything else, like the transportation method, gets sandwiched in between.
Is there a trick to remembering the word vliegtuig?
Yes! Dutch often builds nouns by gluing smaller words together. Vlieg comes from vliegen (to fly), and tuig means gear, tool, or vessel. So an airplane is literally a "fly-vessel"!
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