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In de kroeg drinkt niemand een cocktail.

In de kroeg drinkt niemand een cocktail.
In the pub nobody drinks a cocktail.
From Lesson 420:Dative passives·Dutch

Breakdown of In de kroeg drinkt niemand een cocktail.

de cocktail
the cocktail
de kroeg
the pub

Questions & Answers about In de kroeg drinkt niemand een cocktail.

How would you convert this active sentence into a natural-sounding passive sentence?
To make it passive, the direct object (een cocktail) becomes the subject: Een cocktail wordt in de kroeg door niemand gedronken. However, because een cocktail is an indefinite subject, Dutch strongly prefers using the dummy subject er at the start: Er wordt in de kroeg door niemand een cocktail gedronken.
The current lesson is about passive voice restrictions on indirect objects. How does that apply here?
It actually doesn't, because this sentence has no indirect object! It only has a direct object (een cocktail). However, it serves as a good baseline: remember that while direct objects can easily become the subject of a worden passive sentence, indirect objects (like 'me' in 'He gave me a drink') generally cannot do this in Dutch, unlike in English.
Could I use geen instead of niemand to express this same meaning?
Yes, but you would have to introduce a new subject. Niemand specifically means 'nobody' and acts as the subject here. If you wanted to use a general subject like men (one/people) or mensen (people), you would negate the noun with geen (no) instead: In de kroeg drinken mensen geen cocktails.
Why is the verb drinkt placed before the subject niemand?
This is a classic reminder of the V2 (verb-second) rule. Because the sentence begins with the prepositional phrase In de kroeg, the conjugated verb drinkt must take the second logical position. This forces the subject niemand to move directly behind the verb, which is known as inversion.

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