De kat rent verschrikkelijk snel.

The cat runs terribly fast.

Breakdown of De kat rent verschrikkelijk snel.

• de kat: the cat
• snel: fast
• rennen: to run
• verschrikkelijk: terribly

Questions & Answers about De kat rent verschrikkelijk snel.

Why is De kat used instead of Het kat?

Because kat is a common-gender noun in Dutch and all common-gender nouns take the article de. Only neuter (het-words) get het (e.g. het huis, het kind).

What does rent mean here and how is it conjugated?

rent is the 3rd-person singular present tense of rennen (“to run”). The full present tense is:

• ik ren
• jij/U rent
• hij/zij/het rent
  The -t is simply the regular 3sg ending. It has nothing to do with renting property!

Why does rent end in a single t, not tt?

The stem of rennen is ren-. When you add the 3sg ending -t, you get ren + t = rent. Since the stem ends in n, there’s no doubling of t.

What part of speech is verschrikkelijk and why is it used here?

Here verschrikkelijk is an adverbial intensifier meaning “terribly” or “extremely.” It boosts the strength of the following adverb snel (“fast”). Adverbs in Dutch do not agree or inflect, so verschrikkelijk stays the same.