Breakdown of Hoorde zojuist dat het verkeer tegenzit.
horen
to hear
dat
that (conjunction)
het verkeer
the traffic
zojuist
just now
tegenzitten
to go wrong / to be disappointing (to experience a setback or bad luck)
Questions & Answers about Hoorde zojuist dat het verkeer tegenzit.
Why does this sentence start with the verb Hoorde instead of a subject?
In spoken or informal Dutch, speakers often drop an unstressed subject or object if it is in the first position. Here, the speaker dropped Ik (I). The full sentence would be Ik hoorde zojuist..., but dropping ik creates this verb-first statement. It is very similar to saying 'Just heard...' in English instead of 'I just heard...'.
Since the subject is dropped, how do we know it means 'I heard' and not 'he/she heard'?
Context is the main clue. Because hoorde is the singular past tense form for all singular subjects (ik, jij, hij, zij, het), it could grammatically mean 'he just heard'. However, when a subject is dropped at the very beginning of a conversational statement like this, it is almost always the speaker (ik) being omitted.
How does tegenzit translate to 'is bad' when talking about traffic?
The verb tegenzitten literally means 'to sit against'. It is used idiomatically when things are disappointing, unlucky, or not going smoothly. When applied to traffic (het verkeer), it means the traffic is against you, or simply that it is heavy and causing delays.
Why is tegenzit written as one word at the end of the sentence?
Tegenzitten is a separable verb (tegen + zitten). Because it is inside a subordinate clause introduced by dat (that), the conjugated verb is pushed to the end. When the parts of a separable verb are pushed to the end of a clause like this, they reconnect and are written as a single word: tegenzit.
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