Word
De delegatie eiste de soevereiniteit van het gebied.
Meaning
The delegation demanded the sovereignty of the area.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of De delegatie eiste de soevereiniteit van het gebied.
van
from (possession, starting point) / made of
het gebied
the area
eisen
to demand
de delegatie
the delegation
Questions & Answers about De delegatie eiste de soevereiniteit van het gebied.
The word soevereiniteit looks tricky. Are there any rules to help remember its gender and pronunciation?
Yes! Nouns ending in the French-derived suffix -iteit (equivalent to the English -ity) are always de-words. Also, this suffix always takes the primary stress, so you pronounce it with the emphasis at the very end.
Why is the past tense of eisen written as eiste and not eisde?
To form the simple past, you look at the verb stem (eis). Because the stem ends in s (a voiceless consonant found in the classic 't kofschip memory rule), it gets the -te ending rather than -de.
Since this lesson is about absolute participial constructions, how would the word order change if I started the sentence with Alles in aanmerking nemende (Taking everything into consideration)?
The phrase Alles in aanmerking nemende would act as the first element of the sentence. This triggers inversion in the main clause, meaning the verb must come immediately after the comma, before the subject: Alles in aanmerking nemende, eiste de delegatie...
Why use het for gebied here?
Gebied (area or territory) is a neuter noun, so it takes the definite article het. While you often just have to memorize these, a helpful pattern is that nouns starting with the prefix ge- (like gebouw or gevolg) are very often het-words.