Breakdown of Het is wettelijk verplicht om voor de rechter te verschijnen.
zijn
to be
het
it
voor
to (time), before
te
to (infinitive marker)
Questions & Answers about Het is wettelijk verplicht om voor de rechter te verschijnen.
This lesson is about dienen te (to be required to). How could I rewrite this sentence using that structure?
Because dienen te requires an active subject, you cannot use the dummy subject het. You would need a pronoun like men (one) or je (you). For example: Men dient voor de rechter te verschijnen (One is required to appear before the judge).
I often see legaal used for the English word legal. Why use wettelijk here?
Wettelijk relates specifically to the rules and obligations laid out in the law (de wet). You use it for legal requirements, like wettelijk verplicht. Legaal simply means permitted by law or not illegal, such as a legal parking spot.
Could I drop the word om and just use te verschijnen at the end?
Grammatically yes, but it sounds less natural. When a Dutch sentence starts with the dummy subject het + the verb zijn + an adjective (like verplicht), it is standard to use the full om ... te construction to introduce the infinitive phrase.
Is voor de rechter verschijnen the standard legal terminology in Dutch?