Breakdown of Het vonnis is duidelijk: u bent onschuldig verklaard.
zijn
to be
u
you (formal)
duidelijk
clear (obvious, comprehensible)
onschuldig
innocent
verklaren
to declare (state officially / explain)
het vonnis
the verdict
Questions & Answers about Het vonnis is duidelijk: u bent onschuldig verklaard.
Why does the Dutch use u bent... verklaard ("you are... declared") when the English translation says "you have been declared"?
This is the Dutch present perfect passive! In English, we form the passive perfect with "have been" + past participle. In Dutch, the auxiliary verb for the passive perfect is zijn (to be), and the past participle for "been" (geworden) is completely omitted. Therefore, u bent verklaard directly translates to "you have been declared".
How is the word onschuldig formed to mean "innocent"?
It translates literally to "un-guilty". It comes from the noun de schuld (the debt or the guilt), which becomes the adjective schuldig (guilty). Adding the negative prefix on- (like "un-" in English) creates onschuldig (innocent).
Could we use the informal jij instead of u here?
Grammatically yes, but contextually it would be highly unusual. The word vonnis refers specifically to an official court verdict. In a courtroom setting, the judge will always use the formal u when addressing a defendant.
Why isn't the word order inverted after the colon? Shouldn't it be ...duidelijk: bent u...?
A colon acts as a punctuation mark separating two independent thoughts, not as a conjunction (like want or omdat). Because of this, the clause after the colon starts fresh with standard main-clause word order: Subject (u) followed by the finite verb (bent).
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