Breakdown of Voordat de uitzending begint, wordt er gepraat.
praten
to talk
beginnen
to begin
worden
to become
er
there (existential)
Questions & Answers about Voordat de uitzending begint, wordt er gepraat.
Why is wordt er gepraat translated as "people talk" instead of something passive?
Literally, it means "there is talked". Dutch uses this structure, the impersonal passive, to focus on an action happening without saying who is doing it. English doesn't usually say "there is talked," so we translate it naturally as "people talk" or "there is talking."
Why do we need the word er here?
Because this passive sentence has no real subject doing the action. Dutch grammar still requires a subject to fill that spot, so it uses er as a "dummy" subject. You form this impersonal passive with a form of worden (here, wordt) + er + the past participle (gepraat).
Why does the second part of the sentence start with the verb wordt?
This is due to a word order rule called inversion. The entire first part of the sentence (Voordat de uitzending begint) takes up the first position. Since the verb must be in the second position in a main clause, wordt comes right after the comma, swapping places with the subject er.
Why is begint at the very end of the first part of the sentence?
The word voordat (before) introduces a dependent clause. In Dutch, these clauses follow a special word order rule: the working verb (begint) always gets pushed to the very end of the clause before the comma.