Breakdown of Waarom is jouw cijfer minder goed?
zijn
to be
jouw
your
waarom
why
goed
good
het cijfer
the grade / the mark
minder
less / fewer
Questions & Answers about Waarom is jouw cijfer minder goed?
Why does the sentence use minder goed (less good) instead of the word for "worse"?
You could certainly use slechter (worse), but minder goed is very commonly used in Dutch to soften the message. It implies the grade might still be a passing mark, just not as good as another one. As a reminder from this lesson, minder (less) is the irregular comparative of weinig (little/few).
How does minder work grammatically in this sentence?
Here, minder is placed directly in front of the adjective goed to mean "less good". Just like in English, you will often see the irregular comparatives minder (less) and meer (more) used right before an adjective to compare things.
I thought cijfer meant "number". Why is it translated as "grade"?
While cijfer literally means "digit" or "number", it is the standard Dutch word for a school "grade" or "mark". This makes sense because grades in the Netherlands are usually given as numbers from 1 to 10.
Why use jouw instead of je for "your"?
Jouw is the stressed, emphatic version of the pronoun. The speaker is specifically highlighting your grade, likely in direct comparison to someone else's grade. If they were just asking casually without stressing the owner of the grade, they would use the unstressed je.
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