Breakdown of Hoewel de man bloedt, belt hij geen ambulance.
hij
he / it (referring to a 'de'-word)
de man
the man
geen
no / not any
bellen
to call
de ambulance
the ambulance
hoewel
although
bloeden
to bleed
Questions & Answers about Hoewel de man bloedt, belt hij geen ambulance.
Why does the second half of the sentence say belt hij instead of hij belt?
The first part of the sentence, Hoewel de man bloedt, is a subordinate clause that counts as the first idea in the sentence. Because Dutch forces the main verb into the second position (the V2 rule), the verb belt must come right after the comma. This pushes the subject hij behind the verb, which is called inversion.
Does hoewel change the word order in the first half of the sentence?
Yes. Hoewel means 'although' and always introduces a subordinate clause. In Dutch subordinate clauses, all verbs are pushed to the very end. Here the clause is short, so bloedt just follows the subject, but if the clause were longer, bloedt would still have to be the final word before the comma.
Why do we use geen ambulance instead of niet een ambulance to mean 'does not call an ambulance'?
In Dutch, when you want to negate a noun that would normally use 'a' or 'an', you combine 'not a' into the single word geen. So the sentence translates literally as 'he calls no ambulance' (belt hij geen ambulance).
Why does the Dutch sentence use bloedt when the English translation says 'is bleeding'?
Dutch does not have a direct equivalent to the English 'is doing' or 'are doing' form that gets used everywhere. The simple present tense bloedt covers both 'bleeds' and 'is bleeding'.
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