Breakdown of Het sentiment van het lied wordt niet door iedereen begrepen.
niet
not
begrijpen
to understand
het lied
the song
worden
to become
van
from (possession, starting point) / made of
door
by (agent in a passive sentence)
iedereen
everyone
het sentiment
sentiment
Questions & Answers about Het sentiment van het lied wordt niet door iedereen begrepen.
Why is it "het sentiment" and not "de sentiment"?
Words that end in the suffix -ment are almost always het words (neuter nouns). This is a reliable rule for identifying the gender of nouns adopted from other languages, such as het moment, het argument, and het document.
Why is the verb wordt used here to mean "is"?
This sentence uses the passive voice, which focuses on what happens to the subject rather than who is doing the action. To form the present passive in Dutch, you use the verb worden (literally "to become") along with a past participle (here, begrepen). If you used is, it would shift the meaning to the present perfect passive: "has been understood".
Where does the word begrepen come from, and why doesn't it start with "ge-"?
Begrepen is the past participle of the strong verb begrijpen (to understand). Because it already begins with the fixed, inseparable prefix be-, it does not take the standard ge- prefix that most past participles get. Also notice the strong verb vowel shift from ij to e.
Why does the word begrepen go at the very end of the sentence?
Dutch uses a "verb bracket" (or "verb sandwich") structure in main clauses. The conjugated helping verb (wordt) sits in the normal second position of the sentence, while the other verb part, the past participle (begrepen), is pushed all the way to the end of the clause.
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