Breakdown of We werken vandaag met de klei.
werken
to work
vandaag
today
met
with
we
we (unstressed form of wij)
Questions & Answers about We werken vandaag met de klei.
Why is vandaag placed before met de klei?
Dutch follows a standard Time-Manner-Place (TMP) word order. Because vandaag tells us the time, it comes immediately after the conjugated verb, pushing the prepositional phrase (met de klei) to the end of the clause.
The translation says "are working", but the Dutch sentence just uses the simple verb werken. Is that normal?
Yes, the Dutch simple present tense naturally translates to both the English simple present ("we work") and the present continuous ("we are working"). You could emphasize the ongoing action with the "aan het" structure (We zijn aan het werken), but the simple We werken is very common and usually all you need.
Is there a trick to knowing whether materials like klei use de or het?
Unfortunately, there is no reliable rule for materials and mass nouns, so you just have to memorize their gender. Klei happens to be a de word, which gives us de klei.