Word
Het was het acteerwerk dat de film fantastisch maakte.
Meaning
It was the acting that made the movie fantastic.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Het was het acteerwerk dat de film fantastisch maakte.
zijn
to be
maken
to make
de film
the film
het
it
Questions & Answers about Het was het acteerwerk dat de film fantastisch maakte.
The current lesson is about using wat as a relative pronoun. Why does this sentence use dat instead?
The lesson teaches that you use wat after superlatives used as nouns (like het leukste, the nicest thing) or after indefinite words (like alles). However, acteerwerk is just a regular, specific noun. To refer back to a normal het-word, you must use dat.
Why is the verb maakte placed at the very end of the sentence?
The word dat introduces a relative clause (dat de film fantastisch maakte). Relative clauses in Dutch use subordinate word order, which means the working verb (maakte) gets pushed to the very end of the clause.
How is the word acteerwerk formed?
It is a compound noun made from the verb acteren (to act) and the noun werk (work). You can often add -werk to a verb stem in Dutch to describe the execution or result of a specific task. Since werk is a het-word, the combined word is also het acteerwerk.
Can you use Het was... to emphasize things in Dutch just like in English?
Yes, absolutely! By starting with Het was het acteerwerk dat... instead of just saying the acting made the movie fantastic, you put a strong spotlight on the acting. It emphasizes that the acting—and perhaps not the script or the special effects—was the exact reason the movie was great.