Breakdown of Ist der Verdächtige schon verhört worden?
sein
to be
schon
already
werden
to be (passive auxiliary + past participle)
der Verdächtige
the suspect
verhören
to interrogate
Questions & Answers about Ist der Verdächtige schon verhört worden?
Why does the sentence use worden instead of geworden?
When building the passive voice in the Perfekt tense, German uses worden as the past participle of the helper verb werden. You only use geworden when werden is the main verb of the sentence, like in Er ist alt geworden (He has grown old). Because this sentence is passive, the ge- is dropped.
Since the English translation says "Has", why does the German sentence start with Ist instead of Hat?
In English, the passive perfect uses "to have" (as in "has been"). In German, the passive perfect always uses sein (to be) as the conjugated helping verb. Since der Verdächtige is a singular third-person subject, we use Ist.
Why are there two verbs at the very end of the sentence, and why in that order?
Why does the noun Verdächtige end with an -e?
It is a nominalized adjective, meaning it's an adjective (verdächtig, meaning suspicious) that has been turned into a noun. Because it still behaves grammatically like an adjective, its ending changes based on the article before it. Here, it follows the masculine definite article der in the nominative case, so it takes the standard weak adjective ending -e.
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