Word
Het was de koningin die het rijk stichtte.
Meaning
It was the queen who founded the empire.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Het was de koningin die het rijk stichtte.
zijn
to be
het
it
die
who / that (relative pronoun)
de koningin
the queen
Questions & Answers about Het was de koningin die het rijk stichtte.
Why do we use die here for 'who' instead of wie?
In cleft sentences ('It was X who...'), the connecting word is a relative pronoun. In Dutch, you choose between die and dat. Because de koningin is a de-word, we use die. You generally only use wie as a relative pronoun when it follows a preposition (like aan wie).
Why is the verb stichtte at the very end of the sentence?
The second half of this sentence, die het rijk stichtte, is a relative clause. Relative clauses use subordinate word order, which means the conjugated verb gets pushed to the end of the clause.
Why does stichtte have a double 't'?
The infinitive of the verb is stichten (to found). To form the simple past, you take the stem, which is sticht. Because the stem already ends in a 't', adding the regular singular past tense ending -te results in stichtte.
I thought rijk meant 'rich'. Why does it mean 'empire' here?
When used as an adjective, rijk does indeed mean 'rich'. However, here it is used as a noun (het rijk), which translates to 'the empire', 'the realm', or 'the state'.