Questions & Answers about Het oude gebouw is gesloopt.
Why does this sentence use is to mean "has been"?
This sentence is in the present perfect passive voice, which is the focus of this lesson. To say something "has been [done]" in Dutch, you use the conjugated form of zijn (to be) plus the past participle. So is gesloopt translates to "has been demolished". You leave out the literal translation of "been" (like geworden).
Why is it oude instead of oud? Isn't gebouw a het word?
Yes, gebouw (building) is a het word! You drop the -e ending on an adjective for a het word only when you use een (a) or no article at all, like in een oud gebouw. Because we are using the specific article het (the) here, the adjective gets the standard -e ending.
Why does the past participle gesloopt end with a -t instead of a -d?
You can figure this out with the 't kofschip rule. The infinitive verb is slopen (to demolish). If you remove the -en, the stem ends in p. Because the letter p is one of the consonants in 't kofschip (or soft ketchup), the past participle gets a -t.
Why does gesloopt have a double oo when the verb slopen only has one?
This is because of the Dutch spelling rules for long vowels. In slopen, the o is long because it ends the open syllable (slo-pen). In gesloopt, the syllable is closed by the consonants at the end. To keep that same long o sound in a closed syllable, we must double the vowel to oo.
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