Word
De snelweg werd gisteren afgesloten.
Meaning
The highway was closed off yesterday.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of De snelweg werd gisteren afgesloten.
gisteren
yesterday
worden
to become
afsluiten
to close off
de snelweg
the highway
Questions & Answers about De snelweg werd gisteren afgesloten.
Wait, I thought this lesson was about using 'zijn' for the passive voice. Why does this sentence use 'werd'?
Good catch! This lesson focuses on the present perfect passive (using zijn), but this specific sentence is in the simple past passive. To say an action was done in the past, Dutch uses werd (or werden) + the past participle. If it were present perfect ("has been closed off"), it would use zijn: De snelweg is gisteren afgesloten.
Doesn't 'werd' normally mean 'became'? Why does it mean 'was' here?
You are right that the main verb worden usually means "to become", so werd is "became". However, when worden is used as an auxiliary verb to create the passive voice, it translates to the English verb "to be". Therefore, werd afgesloten translates simply to "was closed off".
How is the past participle 'afgesloten' formed?
It comes from the separable verb afsluiten (to close off). When making a past participle for a separable verb, the ge- gets sandwiched right between the prefix (af) and the rest of the verb (sloten), creating afgesloten.
Can I put 'gisteren' at the beginning of the sentence to emphasize it?