Breakdown of Hoewel ze het document heeft gedeletet, wist ze het terug te vinden.
hebben
to have
het
it
het document
the document
weten
to know (a fact)
Questions & Answers about Hoewel ze het document heeft gedeletet, wist ze het terug te vinden.
Why is the past participle of deleten spelled as gedeletet with that extra 't' at the end?
English loanwords follow standard Dutch rules for the past participle, which is ge- + stem + -t or -d. The stem of the Dutch verb deleten is delete. Because this stem ends in a 't' sound when spoken, it gets a -t ending according to the 't Kofschip rule. So we put it together as ge- + delete + -t to get gedeletet.
Why does the sentence use wist (knew) to mean "managed to"?
In Dutch, the verb weten followed by te and an infinitive translates to "to manage to" or "to be able to" do something. Here, wist... terug te vinden means she managed to find it again.
Why is the word te placed right in the middle of terugvinden?
Terugvinden (to find back / to recover) is a separable verb. When a separable verb is used in a construction that requires te (like the weten te structure we just saw), the te is always sandwiched directly between the separable prefix (terug) and the base verb (vinden).
Why does the second clause start with the verb wist instead of the subject ze?