Breakdown of De baby's zijn hulpeloos zonder ons.
zijn
to be
ons
us (object)
de baby
the baby
zonder
without
Questions & Answers about De baby's zijn hulpeloos zonder ons.
The lesson is about the suffix -loos, but this word is hulpeloos. Why is there an extra -e- in the middle?
The base word is hulp (help) and the suffix is -loos (without/-less). The -e- is a linking vowel inserted just to make the word easier to pronounce. You will see this connecting -e- in several other -loos words, such as hopeloos (hopeless) and grenzeloos (boundless), though not in all of them (for example, draadloos meaning wireless).
Why is the plural spelled baby's instead of babies like in English?
In Dutch, nouns ending in a consonant followed by -y form their plural with an apostrophe and an s (baby's, hobby's). Unlike English, which changes the 'y' to 'ie', Dutch treats these loanwords with its own apostrophe rule. The apostrophe is normally used in Dutch plurals to prevent a long vowel at the end of a singular word from being read as short when an s is added.
Since baby's is plural, shouldn't hulpeloos get an -e ending to match?
No, because hulpeloos is used here as a predicative adjective. That means it comes after a linking verb (zijn) rather than right next to the noun. In Dutch, adjectives only get the inflected -e ending when they are placed directly in front of the noun they modify, as they do in the phrase de hulpeloze baby's (the helpless babies).