Word
Mijn huisgenoot zakte voor het moeilijke vak.
Meaning
My roommate failed the difficult course.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Mijn huisgenoot zakte voor het moeilijke vak.
mijn
my
moeilijk
difficult
voor
for (on behalf of)
het vak
the course, the subject
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?