Breakdown of Mijn huisgenoot zakte voor het moeilijke vak.
mijn
my
moeilijk
difficult
voor
for (on behalf of)
het vak
the course, the subject
de huisgenoot
the roommate
zakken
to fail
Questions & Answers about Mijn huisgenoot zakte voor het moeilijke vak.
How do we know to use -te at the end of zakte instead of -de?
The verb is zakken. To find the simple past, we look at the stem before the -en ending. Because that stem ends in k, which is a consonant in the memory aid 't kofschip, we use the voiceless ending -te. Since huisgenoot (roommate) is singular, it stays zakte.
The infinitive is zakken, so shouldn't the stem have a double k? Why is it spelled zakte and not 'zakkte'?
Dutch spelling rules don't allow double consonants at the end of a syllable. The raw stem 'zakk' loses a k to become zak. Then we add the past tense ending -te, giving us zakte.
Doesn't the verb zakken usually mean 'to sink' or 'to drop'?
Yes, its literal meaning is 'to sink' or 'to drop'. However, the fixed expression zakken voor is the standard way to say 'to fail' a test, exam, or course. Its opposite, 'to pass', is slagen voor.
Why does moeilijke have an extra -e at the end?
Vak (course or subject) is a neuter word, so it uses the definite article het. When an adjective comes between het and a neuter noun, it gets an -e at the end. You would only drop the -e if you used een (a) instead of het, like in the phrase een moeilijk vak.
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