Word
Hij improviseerde omdat de acteur te laat in de coulissen aankwam.
Meaning
He improvised because the actor arrived in the wings too late.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of Hij improviseerde omdat de acteur te laat in de coulissen aankwam.
hij
he / it (referring to a 'de'-word)
in
in
laat
late
te
too
Questions & Answers about Hij improviseerde omdat de acteur te laat in de coulissen aankwam.
Since the current lesson is about past participial clauses, could we rewrite this as Te laat in de coulissen aangekomen, improviseerde hij?
No, that changes the meaning! A past participial clause (beknopte bijzin) requires the implied subject to be exactly the same as the main clause subject. If you use Te laat in de coulissen aangekomen, improviseerde hij, it means that he (the same person) arrived late and then improvised. Because our sentence has two different subjects (de acteur and hij), we cannot use a participial clause and must use a full subordinate clause with omdat.
Why is the separable verb aankomen written as one word (aankwam) at the end of the sentence?
In a normal main clause, a separable verb splits (for example, De acteur kwam te laat aan). But here it is inside a subordinate clause introduced by omdat. Subordinate clauses push all verbs to the end. When a separable verb is pushed to the end of a clause like this, its prefix and the conjugated verb fuse back together into a single word.
What exactly are de coulissen, and is this word always plural?
De coulissen translates to the wings, meaning the offstage area on the sides of a theater stage. Just like the English expression, it is almost exclusively used in the plural. If you want to speak more figuratively, you will also commonly hear the expression achter de schermen (behind the scenes).
Both verbs are in the simple past tense. Would it be wrong to use the present perfect here?