Breakdown of Zowel de droger als de stofzuiger waren door hem gerepareerd.
zijn
to be
hem
him
repareren
to repair
als
as (like / conjunction)
door
by (agent in a passive sentence)
zowel
both (used with 'als')
de droger
the dryer
de stofzuiger
the vacuum cleaner
Questions & Answers about Zowel de droger als de stofzuiger waren door hem gerepareerd.
How are the instrument nouns droger and stofzuiger formed?
They are formed by taking the verbs drogen (to dry) and stofzuigen (to vacuum) and adding the suffix -er. While you might be used to -er creating words for people who perform an action (like werker), it is also the standard suffix for machines or tools that perform an action.
Why doesn't stofzuiger use the -aar suffix, like winnaar?
Why does the phrase zowel de droger als de stofzuiger take a plural verb (waren)?
The structure zowel ... als ... translates to 'both ... and ...'. Because it combines two separate items into the subject, the subject is treated as plural. That is why it takes the plural verb waren rather than the singular was.
Why is waren used here to mean 'had been' instead of hadden?
This is the passive voice. In English, the past perfect passive uses 'had been' plus the past participle. In Dutch, the perfect passive uses the auxiliary verb zijn rather than hebben. Because the action happened in the past, we use the past tense of zijn, resulting in waren ... gerepareerd (had been repaired).
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