Breakdown of We zijn vandaag naar de stad gelopen.
zijn
to be
vandaag
today
de stad
the city
lopen
to walk
naar
to
we
we (unstressed form of wij)
Questions & Answers about We zijn vandaag naar de stad gelopen.
Why does this sentence use zijn (are) instead of hebben (have) to say "we walked"?
In Dutch, the present perfect tense usually uses hebben (to have) as the helping verb. However, verbs of motion that show you moving from one specific place to another—like walking to a destination (naar de stad)—use zijn (to be) instead. Dutch literally says "We are walked".
Why is gelopen (walked) at the very end of the sentence?
When making the present perfect tense, the helping verb (zijn or hebben) sits in the normal second position, but the past participle (the main action word, here gelopen) is pushed to the very end of the sentence.
Why does vandaag (today) come before naar de stad (to the city)?
Dutch has a strict word order rule: Time comes before Place. The time word vandaag must come before the direction/place naar de stad.
How do we get the word gelopen from the verb lopen (to walk)?
Lopen is a strong (irregular) verb. To make its past participle, you add the ge- prefix, but instead of ending in -t or -d like regular verbs, it keeps the -en ending of the infinitive.
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