Breakdown of We waren bang, want we hadden het nieuws pas laat gehoord.
zijn
to be
hebben
to have
laat
late
bang
scared
Questions & Answers about We waren bang, want we hadden het nieuws pas laat gehoord.
How does the past perfect tense work in this sentence?
It uses hadden (had) as the helping verb and the past participle gehoord (heard). Just like in English, we use this tense to describe an action that happened before another action in the past. They were afraid because they had already heard the news earlier.
Why is gehoord at the very end of the sentence?
In Dutch sentences with a helping verb like hadden, the main action verb (the past participle gehoord) always gets pushed to the very end of the clause.
Why doesn't the word want (because) push the verbs to the end of the sentence?
The word want is a joining word that keeps the normal word order. If you used omdat (which also means because), the verbs would be pushed to the end: omdat we het nieuws pas laat hadden gehoord.
What does the word pas mean before laat?
The word pas is often used with time to mean "only" or "not until". So pas laat translates to "only late" or "not until late", emphasizing that they did not hear the news earlier.