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Breakdown of In onze hoofdstad zijn veel oude bezienswaardigheden te zien.
zijn
to be
in
in
oud
old
onze
our
zien
to see
veel
many
de hoofdstad
the capital city
de bezienswaardigheid
the sight
Questions & Answers about In onze hoofdstad zijn veel oude bezienswaardigheden te zien.
What word order rule causes In onze hoofdstad zijn veel oude bezienswaardigheden te zien instead of Veel oude bezienswaardigheden zijn te zien in onze hoofdstad?
Dutch is a V2 (verb‐second) language. When a sentence starts with a phrase (here In onze hoofdstad), the finite verb (zijn) must come immediately after that phrase, and the subject follows the verb. The rest of the sentence then follows.
What exactly does te zien mean here? Is this a passive construction?
Te zien is not a passive tense but an infinitive phrase meaning “to see” (literally “there are … to see”). It expresses that many old sights “can be seen” or “are available for viewing.”
Why is there no article before veel oude bezienswaardigheden?
Quantifiers like veel (“a lot of”) replace articles in Dutch. You don’t say de veel or een veel; you simply use veel + noun.
Why does oude end in -e instead of staying as oud?
Attributive adjectives in Dutch take an -e when they come before a noun that is definite (with a determiner) or plural. Since bezienswaardigheden is plural and preceded by veel, the adjective gets the -e ending.
Could you rewrite this sentence using er zijn?
Yes. You can say:
Er zijn in onze hoofdstad veel oude bezienswaardigheden te zien.
Here er fills the first position, keeping zijn as the second element, and the rest of the sentence follows.
How is bezienswaardigheden formed and pronounced?
It’s a compound of zien (“to see”) + waardigheid (“worthiness”) + plural -en. So bezienswaardigheid = “thing worth seeing,” and bezienswaardigheden is its plural. You can break it into syllables: be-ziens-waar-dig-heden.
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