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Questions & Answers about Het geloof blijft eeuwig.
Since this lesson is about the present subjunctive, why is blijft in the indicative tense here?
Because this sentence is simply stating a fact: "The faith remains eternal." If it were a formulaic subjunctive expressing a formal wish or blessing ("May the faith remain eternal"), it would be Het geloof blijve eeuwig. You form that fixed subjunctive by dropping the final -n from the infinitive (blijven).
Is there a trick to remembering that it is het geloof rather than de geloof?
Yes! A very reliable rule in Dutch is that most nouns starting with the prefix ge-, be-, or ver- (that don't end in a suffix like -ing) are neuter het-words. Since geloof consists of the prefix ge- plus the root of loven/geloven, it takes het.
Why doesn't eeuwig get an -e ending here?
Because it is acting as a predicate adjective—an adjective that follows a linking verb to describe the subject. In Dutch, predicate adjectives never take an inflected -e ending, regardless of whether the noun they describe is a de-word or a het-word.
Is blijven always used as a linking verb in sentences like this?