Breakdown of Het was afmattend, maar we zijn lang aan het zwoegen geweest.
zijn
to be
maar
but
het
it
lang
long
we
we (unstressed form of wij)
zwoegen
to toil / to slave away
afmattend
exhausting
Questions & Answers about Het was afmattend, maar we zijn lang aan het zwoegen geweest.
Why do we use zijn and geweest here to say "we have been toiling"?
This is the perfect continuous tense in Dutch. To say you "have been doing" something, you use the present perfect of zijn (which is zijn ... geweest) wrapped around the continuous aan het [infinitive] structure. Notice that even though English says "we HAVE been", this Dutch structure is always built with the auxiliary verb zijn (to be).
Why is geweest placed at the very end of the sentence?
In a main clause, the conjugated verb (zijn) takes the second position, pushing the past participle (geweest) to the end of the clause. The continuous action phrase (aan het zwoegen) sits neatly inside this verbal frame, right before the final participle.
Could we just say we hebben lang gezwoegd instead?
Yes, we hebben lang gezwoegd (we have toiled for a long time) is grammatically correct and means almost the same thing. However, using the aan het ... geweest structure emphasizes the ongoing, continuous duration of the hard work. This perfectly matches the context of the work being afmattend (exhausting).
Afmattend translates to "exhausting", but what is the literal structure of this word?
It is the present participle of the separable verb afmatten (to exhaust or wear out). Just like in English where you add "-ing" to a verb to make it an adjective describing an effect (exhaust + ing), in Dutch you add -d to the infinitive to get afmattend.
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