Breakdown of Het bekende gedicht wordt door de schrijver vertaald.
worden
to become
door
by (agent in a passive sentence)
de schrijver
the writer
bekend
well-known
het gedicht
the poem
vertalen
to translate
Questions & Answers about Het bekende gedicht wordt door de schrijver vertaald.
How do we express who is doing the action in this passive sentence?
In passive sentences, the person or thing doing the action is introduced by the preposition door. So, door de schrijver means 'by the writer'. While door often translates to 'through' in other contexts, in passive sentences it is the exact equivalent of 'by'.
Why is vertaald at the very end of the sentence?
This sentence uses the passive voice, which is formed with the helping verb worden (here as wordt) and a past participle (vertaald). In Dutch, the conjugated helping verb takes the second position in the sentence, while the past participle is pushed all the way to the end.
Gedicht is a het word, so why does the adjective bekend get an -e ending to become bekende?
You are right that het words can sometimes drop the -e ending on adjectives. However, that only happens when they follow the indefinite article een (a/an) or have no article at all. Because we are using the definite article het (the), the adjective keeps the standard -e ending to make het bekende gedicht.
Why doesn't the past participle vertaald start with ge-?
Most past participles in Dutch start with ge-, but verbs that already start with inseparable prefixes like ver-, be-, or ont- are an exception. Since the infinitive verb is vertalen, its past participle is simply vertaald without adding an extra ge-.
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