Breakdown of Mij werd de roulette afgeraden door de croupier.
mij
me
worden
to become
door
by (agent in a passive sentence)
de croupier
the croupier
Questions & Answers about Mij werd de roulette afgeraden door de croupier.
Why does this sentence start with Mij instead of Ik, even though the English translation starts with 'I'?
This highlights a major rule for the Dutch passive voice. In English, you can turn an indirect object into the subject, allowing you to say 'I was advised'. In standard Dutch, you cannot do this. The subject of this passive sentence must be the direct object from the active version, which is de roulette. The person receiving the advice remains an indirect object, so you must use the object pronoun mij (to me) rather than the subject pronoun ik.
Since de roulette is the subject, why isn't it at the beginning of the sentence?
Placing mij at the beginning puts the emphasis on who received the advice, setting the topic. Because Dutch strictly enforces the verb-second rule in main clauses, starting with the object mij forces the auxiliary verb werd into the second position. The subject de roulette must then follow immediately after the verb.
Could I use Aan mij instead of just Mij at the start of the sentence?
Yes, you can absolutely say Aan mij werd de roulette afgeraden. Because you are the indirect object receiving the advice, using the preposition aan (to) makes that grammatical role explicitly clear, though simply using mij on its own works perfectly well.
What is the infinitive of afgeraden and why is the ge- in the middle of the word?