Questions & Answers about Zij had de waarheid bekend.
How does this sentence fit into the lesson's theme of reported speech?
This sentence is written in the past perfect tense (had bekend). When you use reported speech to talk about something said in the past, tenses shift one step back in time. For example, if someone originally said "She has confessed" (Zij heeft bekend - present perfect), it shifts to the past perfect when reported: "He said that she had confessed."
If I put this into a reported speech clause starting with "Hij zei dat..." (He said that...), what happens to the word order?
Because dat introduces a subordinate clause, the verbs had and bekend must both move to the very end of the sentence. You can say either "Hij zei dat zij de waarheid had bekend" or "Hij zei dat zij de waarheid bekend had". Both verb orders are correct in Dutch.
Wait, doesn't bekend mean "famous" or "known"?
Yes, it does! In this sentence, however, bekend is the past participle of the verb bekennen (to confess). The adjective bekend (famous/known) actually originated from this exact participle—when a secret is confessed or revealed, it becomes "known."
Why use zij instead of ze here?
Zij is the stressed form of "she." You would use it here to emphasize exactly who confessed the truth (e.g., she confessed, not someone else). If you don't need to put special emphasis on the person, the unstressed ze is perfectly fine to use.
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