Breakdown of Mijn huisgenoot zakte, omdat hij te veel kletste.
hij
he / it (referring to a 'de'-word)
veel
much / many / a lot of
te
too
mijn
my
omdat
because (subordinating)
de huisgenoot
the roommate
zakken
to fail
kletsen
to chat
Questions & Answers about Mijn huisgenoot zakte, omdat hij te veel kletste.
Why does zakte mean "failed"? I thought it meant "sank" or "dropped"?
You are right! The verb zakken literally means to sink or drop. However, in Dutch, it is also the standard way to say you failed an exam, a driving test, or a class (imagine dropping below the passing line). Its opposite, to pass, is slagen.
Why do both zakte and kletste get -te instead of -de in the past tense?
This is the 't kofschip rule in action! First, we find the stem of the verbs by taking the infinitives (zakken and kletsen) and removing -en. This gives us the stems zak and klets. Because they end in k and s, and both of those are voiceless consonants found in the word 't kofschip, we must add -te for the singular past tense.
Why is the verb kletste pushed to the end of the sentence?
This happens because of the word omdat (because). It is a subordinating conjunction, which means it introduces a dependent clause. A major rule in Dutch word order is that in a dependent clause, the working verb (here, kletste) gets kicked to the very end of the sentence.
Why is te veel written as two separate words here?
When you want to say "too much" or "too many", it is always two words: te veel. You will only see it written together as one word (teveel) when it is used as a noun meaning "a surplus" or "an excess" (for example, een teveel aan water).
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