Breakdown of Zij zoekt de mysterieuze astroloog zodat ze het verhaal kan horen.
zij
she
zoeken
to look for
het verhaal
the story
kunnen
can
horen
to hear
ze
they; she (unstressed form of zij) / them (object)
zodat
so that
de astroloog
the astrologer
mysterieus
mysterious
Questions & Answers about Zij zoekt de mysterieuze astroloog zodat ze het verhaal kan horen.
The lesson is about word order with hebben or zijn. Does the red vs. green rule apply to kan horen too?
Yes! While your current lesson focuses on perfect tenses (like heeft gehoord vs. gehoord heeft), the exact same rule applies to modal verbs and infinitives at the end of a subordinate clause. You can use the red word order (kan horen) or the green word order (horen kan). Both are grammatically correct, though kan horen is much more common in everyday speech.
Why isn't there a word for 'for' after zoekt?
The Dutch verb zoeken means 'to seek' or 'to look for' all on its own, so it can take a direct object directly. You could add the preposition and say zij zoekt naar de astroloog, but leaving naar out is very common and completely correct.
Why does mysterieuze end with a -z- instead of an -s-?
The base adjective is mysterieus. Because it is placed before a de-word (de astroloog), the adjective gets an -e added to the end. In Dutch spelling rules, a final -s often changes to a voiced -z- when a vowel is added, similar to how huis becomes huizen.
What exactly does zodat do to the sentence structure?
Zodat translates to 'so that' and is a subordinating conjunction. This means it introduces a dependent clause and forces all the verbs in that clause (kan and horen) to group together in a verb cluster at the very end of the sentence.
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