Breakdown of Weet jij waarvandaan deze bladeren zijn gekomen?
zijn
to be
jij
you
weten
to know
komen
to come
deze
these
waarvandaan
from where
het blad
the leaf
Elon.io is an online learning platform
We have an entire course teaching Dutch grammar and vocabulary.
Questions & Answers about Weet jij waarvandaan deze bladeren zijn gekomen?
Why do we use Weet jij instead of Ken jij?
In Dutch weten means “to know a fact or piece of information,” whereas kennen means “to be familiar with” a person, place, or thing. Since you’re asking for information (the origin of the leaves), you use weten. Hence Weet jij…? = “Do you know…?”
What does waarvandaan mean?
Waarvandaan is a compound of waar (“where”) + vandaan (“from”), so it literally means “from where.” You use it to ask about the origin or starting point of something:
Weet jij waarvandaan deze bladeren zijn gekomen?
= “Do you know from where these leaves have come?”
Why is waarvandaan written as one word?
Dutch often fuses adverbs and prepositions into single compounds when they function as one unit. Waarvandaan is one such fixed adverbial, combining waar + vandaan into a single word that indicates “from where.”
Why is the word order deze bladeren zijn gekomen instead of zijn deze bladeren gekomen?
The clause introduced by waarvandaan is a subordinate (embedded) clause. In Dutch subordinate clauses, the conjugated verb (here zijn) goes to the end, after the subject and any objects or participles. So you get: subject (deze bladeren) – auxiliary (zijn) – past participle (gekomen).
Why do we use zijn as the auxiliary verb here instead of hebben?
In Dutch, most verbs form the perfect tense with hebben, but verbs of motion or change of state (like komen “to come,” gaan “to go,” worden “to become”) take zijn. So “to come” in the perfect is zijn gekomen – “have come.”
Why do we say deze bladeren and not die bladeren?
Deze means “these” (close to the speaker), whereas die means “those” (further away). If you’re referring to leaves you can see or have just picked up, you’d use deze bladeren (“these leaves”). Use die bladeren only if they’re at a distance or already mentioned earlier.
Could we use the simple past and say kwamen instead of zijn gekomen?
Yes, you could say:
Weet jij waarvandaan deze bladeren kwamen?
However, spoken and informal Dutch usually prefers the perfect tense (zijn gekomen) to talk about past events with present relevance. The simple past (kwamen) feels more literary or used in storytelling.
How do you pronounce waarvandaan?
A rough phonetic guide is:
vaar-van-DAHN
- vaar = /ʋaːr/ (Dutch w sounds like English v plus a long “aa”)
- van = /vɑn/ (short “a”)
- DAHN = /daːn/ with main stress on the last syllable.