Word
Wir hätten das Auto nicht überholen dürfen.
Meaning
We should not have overtaken the car.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Questions & Answers about Wir hätten das Auto nicht überholen dürfen.
Why is it dürfen at the end instead of the past participle gedurft?
When a modal verb like dürfen is used in a perfect tense along with another verb (überholen), it drops its normal past participle (gedurft) and uses its infinitive form instead. This is called the double infinitive rule because you end up with two infinitives together: überholen dürfen.
Why do we use hätten here instead of haben?
We use hätten because this expresses a hypothetical past situation or a regret. It uses the Subjunctive II (Konjunktiv II) to describe what "should have" happened. If it were just a stated fact about the past ("We didn't have permission to overtake"), you would use the normal perfect tense: Wir haben das Auto nicht überholen dürfen.
Doesn't dürfen mean "to be allowed to"? Why does the English translation say "should not have"?
A literal translation is indeed "We would not have been allowed to overtake the car." However, natural English often translates this kind of broken rule as "We shouldn't have." If you wanted to express "should not have" strictly as a bad idea rather than breaking a rule, you would use the modal verb sollen: Wir hätten das Auto nicht überholen sollen.
What is the word order rule for the two verbs at the end?
When you have a double infinitive at the end of a sentence, the main action verb (überholen) comes first, and the modal verb (dürfen) is placed at the very end.