Breakdown of Plastic is schadelijk, dus we moeten het recyclen.
zijn
to be
het
it
moeten
to have to, must
we
we (unstressed form of wij)
dus
so, therefore
het plastic
the plastic
recyclen
to recycle
schadelijk
harmful
Questions & Answers about Plastic is schadelijk, dus we moeten het recyclen.
The current lesson is about immers, but it isn't in this sentence. How could we rewrite this idea using immers?
Dus means 'so', putting the conclusion in the second half of the sentence. Immers means 'after all' or 'as we know', which means it introduces the reason. To use it here, you have to swap the logic around: We moeten plastic recyclen, het is immers schadelijk. (We must recycle plastic, it is, after all, harmful.)
Why is the word order dus we moeten and not dus moeten we?
Here, dus is acting as a coordinating conjunction, exactly like en (and) or maar (but). That means it simply glues two normal sentences together without triggering word order inversion. Note: You will sometimes see ...dus moeten we... when a speaker treats dus as an adverb in the first position, but keeping standard word order is very common and perfectly correct.
Why do we use the pronoun het to refer back to plastic?
Materials and raw substances in Dutch are very often neuter nouns. Because it is het plastic, you must use the neuter pronoun het (it) to refer back to it, rather than hij or hem.
Is the English loanword recyclen treated like a normal Dutch verb?
Yes, grammatically it follows the standard rules for Dutch verbs. It gets standard endings (for example, ik recycle, jij recyclet, wij recyclen), although the pronunciation of the root word keeps its English sound.
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