Breakdown of Het is lastig om de economie wereldwijd te voorspellen.
zijn
to be
het
it
te
to (infinitive marker)
om
in order to
lastig
tricky / difficult (troublesome)
voorspellen
to predict
de economie
the economy
wereldwijd
worldwide
Questions & Answers about Het is lastig om de economie wereldwijd te voorspellen.
Why do we need the om ... te structure in this sentence?
When you use a phrase with an adjective like Het is lastig (It is difficult) or Het is makkelijk (It is easy) followed by an action, Dutch uses the om ... te + infinitive structure. It acts as a bridge linking the description to the verb.
Can I leave out om and just say 'Het is lastig de economie... te voorspellen'?
Yes, grammatically you can drop om and just keep te voorspellen at the end of the sentence. However, including om is much more common in everyday Dutch and helps clearly signal that an infinitive phrase is starting.
Why doesn't wereldwijd get an -e at the end here?
Because it is acting as an adverb modifying how we are predicting things (on a global scale), rather than an adjective modifying the economy itself. If you wanted to say 'the global economy', it would come before the noun with an -e: de wereldwijde economie.
Is there a difference between lastig and moeilijk?
They both mean 'difficult' and are very often interchangeable. Moeilijk is the standard word for something hard or complex, while lastig often adds a small nuance of being tricky, bothersome, or annoying to deal with.
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