Breakdown of De back-up zou ons hebben gered als het kompas was kwijtgeraakt.
zijn
to be
hebben
to have
als
if
ons
us
zou
would
het kompas
the compass
de back-up
the back-up
redden
to save
kwijtraken
to lose
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Questions & Answers about De back-up zou ons hebben gered als het kompas was kwijtgeraakt.
Why is zou hebben gered used to express the hypothetical past?
In Dutch, you form an unreal past conditional with the past tense of zullen (here zou) plus a perfect infinitive. The perfect infinitive itself consists of a non-finite auxiliary (hebben or zijn) and the past participle of the main verb. So zou hebben gered literally means “would have saved.”
Why do the non-finite verbs (ons hebben gered) appear at the very end of the sentence?
Dutch main-clause word order requires the finite verb in second position (here zou). All remaining verbs—including auxiliary + participle clusters—move to the clause’s end. That’s why ons hebben gered is grouped together after everything else.
Why is the auxiliary in the “if-clause” was kwijtgeraakt instead of had kwijtgeraakt?
The verb kwijtraken (“to lose”) is a separable verb that takes zijn as its auxiliary in perfect tenses. In the past perfect (pluperfect), you combine was (the past tense of zijn) with the past participle kwijtgeraakt, yielding was kwijtgeraakt (“had been lost”).
Why is kwijtgeraakt written as one word rather than two?
With separable verbs like kwijtraken, the prefix (kwijt) and the verb stem fuse into a single past participle (kwijtgeraakt). In all perfect‐tense forms, you keep them together.
Why is de back-up used, and why the hyphen?
Back-up is a loanword from English that has been adopted into Dutch. It’s treated as a compound noun, hence the hyphen. Because back-up is grammatically singular and takes a definite article, you say de back-up.
Why is ons used here instead of we or another pronoun?
Ons is the unstressed first-person plural object pronoun (“us”). Since the back-up would have saved us, you need the object form ons, not the subject form we.
Why is it zou (singular) and not zouden (plural)?
In a conditional clause, zullen agrees with the grammatical subject. Here the subject is de back-up (singular), so you use zou. If you had a plural subject (e.g. de backups), you would use zouden.
Why is het kompas used, not de kompas?
In Dutch, nouns are either de-words or het-words. Kompas is a neuter noun, so it takes het. You simply have to memorize that het kompas is correct.