Breakdown of Het kind moest zich door het kleine gat wurmen.
klein
small
het kind
the child
moeten
to have to, must
door
through
Questions & Answers about Het kind moest zich door het kleine gat wurmen.
How would we replace door het kleine gat with through it using the grammar from this lesson?
You would replace the prepositional phrase with the complex pronominal adverb erdoorheen. The sentence becomes: Het kind moest zich erdoorheen wurmen. The suffix -heen is added to erdoor to emphasize the physical movement of passing entirely from one side of the hole to the other.
Why is zich used in this sentence?
The verb here is zich wurmen, which is a reflexive verb. It literally means to worm oneself. While English allows you to simply say the child squeezed through, Dutch requires the reflexive pronoun zich to show whose body is doing the wriggling.
Why are moest and wurmen separated in the sentence structure?
Because moest (the past tense of moeten) acts as the conjugated modal verb, which takes the second position in a main clause. Modal verbs always push the main infinitive verb, which is wurmen here, to the very end of the sentence.
Are wurmen and the English word worm related?
Yes! Just like an earthworm (de worm) wiggles its way through the soil, zich wurmen paints a vivid, literal picture of someone wriggling and pushing their way through a tight space.