De volkstuinder wiedt het onkruid.

Because Dutch usually writes compound nouns as a single word.

So where English might use two words, such as allotment gardener or garden owner, Dutch often combines them. Volkstuinder is built around volkstuin and refers to a person connected with that kind of garden.

This is very normal in Dutch:

• tuinhuis = garden house / shed
• zonnebril = sunglasses
• schoolplein = school playground

So volkstuinder may look long to an English speaker, but in Dutch it is a perfectly ordinary one-word noun.

Dutch has two singular definite articles:

• de for common-gender nouns
• het for neuter nouns

So:

• de volkstuinder
• het onkruid

There is no simple rule that lets you always predict whether a noun takes de or het, so learners usually memorize the article with the noun.

A useful extra point:

• plural nouns always take de
• diminutives always take het

But here, the main thing is just that volkstuinder is a de-word and onkruid is a het-word.

Because wiedt is the present tense, third-person singular form of the verb wieden.

The infinitive is wieden. In the present tense:

• ik wied
• jij wiedt
• u wiedt
• hij/zij wiedt
• wij wieden
• jullie wieden
• zij wieden

In this sentence, the subject is de volkstuinder, which is singular, so the verb must also be singular: wiedt.

Because the verb stem is wied-, and the third-person singular ending is -t.

So:

• stem: wied
• ending: t
• together: wiedt

This is a very common Dutch spelling pattern. If a present-tense stem already ends in d, adding -t gives dt.

A useful thing to know: although it is written dt, at the end of a word it is pronounced like t because of final devoicing in Dutch. So wiedt does not sound like two separate consonants.

Yes, onkruid is grammatically singular here.

In Dutch, onkruid is often used as a mass noun or collective noun, much like English vegetation or grass in some contexts. So het onkruid can refer to weeds in general, even if English would naturally say the weeds.

So Dutch:

• het onkruid wieden

can correspond to English:

• to weed the garden
• to remove the weeds
• to weed the weeds out

The plural onkruiden does exist, but it is much less common and is usually used when talking about different kinds of weeds or separate weeds more specifically.

This sentence has the basic Dutch main-clause order:

subject + finite verb + object

So:

• De volkstuinder = subject
• wiedt = finite verb
• het onkruid = object

That part is quite similar to English.

The important Dutch rule behind it is that in a main clause, the finite verb normally comes in second position. In this sentence, the subject is first, so the verb comes right after it.

For example, if you move another element to the front, the verb still stays in second position:

• Vandaag wiedt de volkstuinder het onkruid.
• In de tuin wiedt de volkstuinder het onkruid.

So the sentence is simple, but it still follows the important Dutch verb-second pattern.

No. De volkstuinder does not have to refer to a man.

Here, de is not a marker of masculine gender in the way an English learner might first assume. It is just the definite article used with this noun. In modern Dutch, many nouns for people can be used in a gender-neutral way unless the context makes the person’s gender clear.

So de volkstuinder can mean:

• a male allotment gardener
• a female allotment gardener
• an allotment gardener of unspecified gender

A careful pronunciation in IPA is approximately:

/də ˈvɔlkstœyndər ʋit ət ˈɔŋkrœyt/

A few useful pronunciation notes:

• de is usually weak and unstressed: /də/
• het is also usually weak: /ət/
• w in Dutch is pronounced somewhere between English v and w
• the ui sound in volkstuinder and onkruid has no exact English equivalent
• wiedt ends in a sound like t, even though it is spelled dt

So the hardest parts for most English speakers are:

• the Dutch ui
• the Dutch w
• not trying to pronounce the final d in wiedt separately