Word
Noch de vijand, noch de baas heeft ons plan doorzien.
Meaning
Neither the enemy nor the boss has seen through our plan.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Noch de vijand, noch de baas heeft ons plan doorzien.
hebben
to have
ons
our
de baas
the boss
het plan
the plan
Questions & Answers about Noch de vijand, noch de baas heeft ons plan doorzien.
Why doesn't the past participle of doorzien get a -ge- prefix here? (e.g., doorgezien)
doorzien is a dual-nature verb. Here, it means to see through a plan, which is figurative. In this meaning, the verb is inseparable and the stress falls on -zien (doorZIEN). Because it is inseparable, the past participle does not take the -ge- prefix, making it simply doorzien.
Does doorzien have a separable version with a different meaning?
Yes! When the stress is on the prefix (DOORzien), it is separable. The separable version has a literal meaning: to look through something physical, like looking through a window or browsing through a stack of documents. Its past participle would be doorgezien.
Why is the verb heeft singular when the sentence mentions both the enemy and the boss?
The conjunction noch ... noch ... (neither ... nor ...) connects two singular subjects (de vijand and de baas). In Dutch, this construction pairs with a singular verb, just like neither ... nor ... does in English.
Why is it ons plan instead of onze plan?
The noun plan is a neuter word (het plan). When saying our with a singular het word, you must use ons. You only use onze for de words and for all plural nouns.