Breakdown of Dankzij het duidelijke patroon konden wij vooruitgang snel meten.
wij
we
snel
quickly
kunnen
could
duidelijk
clear
dankzij
thanks to
meten
to measure
de vooruitgang
the progress
het patroon
the pattern
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Questions & Answers about Dankzij het duidelijke patroon konden wij vooruitgang snel meten.
What does dankzij mean and how does it differ from door in Dutch?
dankzij is a preposition meaning “thanks to”, used to indicate a positive cause or reason.
door also indicates cause (“through/by”), but it’s more neutral and can describe any means or agent. Use dankzij when you want to emphasize that something positive happened “thanks to” someone or something.
Why is the finite verb konden placed before the subject wij in this sentence?
Dutch is a V2 (verb-second) language. When you start a main clause with anything other than the subject—in this case the adverbial phrase dankzij het duidelijke patroon—the finite verb must occupy the second position. That forces konden to come before wij.
Why is there a second verb meten at the end of the sentence?
Because konden is a modal verb (“to be able to”). In Dutch, when you use a modal or auxiliary verb, the main verb stays in the infinitive and moves to the very end of the clause. So konden (finite) comes in position 2 and meten (infinitive) goes last.
Why does duidelijke get an -e ending in het duidelijke patroon?
Adjectives in Dutch take a weak (-e) ending when they follow a definite article (de, het), demonstrative (dit, dat), possessive (mijn, jouw, …) or other definite determiner. Since patroon is introduced by het, the adjective becomes duidelijke.
Why isn’t there an article before vooruitgang?
Vooruitgang (“progress”) is typically used as an uncountable or abstract noun. In Dutch, such nouns often appear without de or een when talking about progress in general—just like we say in English, “we measured progress,” not “we measured the progress.”
Can the adverb snel be moved to a different position in the sentence?
Adverbs in Dutch are fairly flexible, but you must respect the V2 rule and keep the infinitive at the end. You could say:
Dankzij het duidelijke patroon konden wij snel vooruitgang meten.
or
Dankzij het duidelijke patroon konden wij de vooruitgang snel meten.
Moving snel too far (e.g. before konden) would violate the verb-second requirement.
Is dankzij always written as one word?
Yes. In contemporary Dutch dankzij is a single preposition. Writing it as dank zij is archaic or incorrect.