Breakdown of De kok die de soep maakt, kan heel goed koken.
koken
to cook
maken
to make
de soep
the soup
heel
very
kunnen
can
goed
good
die
who / that (relative pronoun)
de kok
the cook
Questions & Answers about De kok die de soep maakt, kan heel goed koken.
Why do we use die for 'who' in this sentence instead of wie or dat?
Die is a relative pronoun linking back to de kok. In Dutch, you use die to refer back to de-words and plural nouns, and dat for het-words. You might remember wie as a question word, but as a relative pronoun, it is mostly only used after prepositions (like met wie, meaning 'with whom').
Why is maakt at the end of the first part, before the comma?
The phrase die de soep maakt is a relative clause, which is a type of subclause that adds extra information about the noun. In Dutch subclauses, the conjugated verb (maakt) gets pushed to the very end of that clause.
Why does the verb kan come right after the comma?
The main sentence is basically De kok kan heel goed koken. The whole expanded chunk De kok die de soep maakt acts as one giant subject taking up position 1. Because Dutch main clauses strictly follow the 'verb-second' (V2) rule, the verb kan must take position 2, immediately after that whole subject block.
I see kok and koken here. Is koken the plural of kok?
No, they are different types of words! De kok is the noun for 'the cook' (the person), and its plural is actually de koks. Koken is the infinitive verb meaning 'to cook'. It is placed at the very end of the sentence because the modal verb kan (can) always pushes the other verb to the end.
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