Word
Het was jammer, want het slechte weer had de vakantie verpest.
Meaning
It was a pity, because the bad weather had ruined the vacation.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Het was jammer, want het slechte weer had de vakantie verpest.
zijn
to be
hebben
to have
de vakantie
the holiday
het weer
the weather
Questions & Answers about Het was jammer, want het slechte weer had de vakantie verpest.
Where is the past perfect tense in this sentence?
The past perfect here is had ... verpest (had ruined). Just like in English, it is made using the past tense of hebben (to have) — which is had for singular subjects like het slechte weer — and a past participle (verpest). It describes an action that happened before another past event.
Why doesn't the past participle verpest start with ge-?
The verb is verpesten (to ruin). Because it begins with the unstressed prefix ver-, it does not get an extra ge- in the past participle. Other common prefixes that block the ge- prefix are be-, er-, her-, and ont-.
Why doesn't the verb move to the end of the sentence after want?
The word want (because) is a coordinating conjunction. That means it links two normal sentences together without changing the word order. If the sentence had used omdat (which also means because), the verbs would be pushed to the end of the clause: ...omdat het slechte weer de vakantie had verpest.
Why is there an -e on the end of slechte?