Breakdown of We hebben gisteravond geen film gezien.
hebben
to have
geen
no / not any
zien
to see
de film
the film
Questions & Answers about We hebben gisteravond geen film gezien.
Why does the past participle gezien end in -en instead of -d or -t?
Zien (to see) is an irregular verb. Regular past participles usually end in -d or -t, but many high-frequency Dutch verbs are irregular and have past participles ending in -en. You just have to memorize these forms!
Why are hebben and gezien separated in this sentence?
In the Dutch present perfect tense, the helping verb (here, hebben) takes the second position in the sentence, while the past participle (gezien) is pushed all the way to the very end. Everything else goes in between.
Why do we use geen to say 'did not' instead of niet?
Geen is used to negate nouns that use the word een (a/an) or have no article. Because the English sentence means 'did not see a movie', Dutch naturally expresses this as seeing no movie (geen film).
Does the word gisteravond come from gisteren?
Yes! To say 'yesterday evening' or 'last night', Dutch combines gisteren (yesterday) and avond (evening). Notice that gisteren drops the -en at the end when it forms this compound word.