Breakdown of Mijn eerste poging om de toets foutloos te maken is mislukt.
Questions & Answers about Mijn eerste poging om de toets foutloos te maken is mislukt.
In Dutch, when you use a noun like poging (attempt) followed by an infinitive clause, you normally need om ... te:
- een poging doen om te stoppen – to make an attempt to stop
- mijn beslissing om te verhuizen – my decision to move
So:
- Mijn eerste poging om de toets foutloos te maken... ✅
- Mijn eerste poging de toets foutloos te maken... ❌ (sounds wrong/unfinished)
When a verb directly governs an infinitive, you often don’t use om:
- Ik probeer de toets foutloos te maken. (no om)
- Ik hoop de toets foutloos te maken. (no om)
But with poging (a noun), you need om ... te to introduce the infinitive idea: attempt *to do X*.
In Dutch, the expression een toets maken means “to take a test” (as a student). It’s an idiomatic use of maken that doesn’t match English literally.
Some common school expressions:
- een toets maken – to take a test
- een toets nakijken – to mark/grade a test (teacher)
- een toets opstellen – to compose/write a test (teacher)
So de toets foutloos te maken = to take the test without mistakes, not to create the test.
The verb mislukken (to fail, to go wrong, not succeed) normally uses zijn in the perfect tense:
- Het experiment is mislukt. – The experiment failed.
- Het plan is mislukt. – The plan failed.
That’s because mislukken behaves like an intransitive change-of-state verb, similar to:
- vallen → Hij is gevallen. – He fell.
- slagen → Het is geslaagd. – It succeeded.
So with poging:
- Mijn poging is mislukt. – My attempt failed.
Heeft mislukt is generally wrong in standard Dutch in this meaning.
Dutch past participles usually get ge-:
- maken → gemaakt
- halen → gehaald
But many verbs with unstressed prefixes be-, ge-, her-, ont-, ver-, er-, mis- do not take an extra ge-. Instead, the participle ends in -t or -d:
- begrijpen → begrepen
- verliezen → verloren
- ontkennen → ontkend
- mislukken → mislukt
So:
- Infinitive: mislukken
- Past participle: mislukt (no ge-)
Gemislukt is incorrect in standard Dutch.
In this sentence, mislukt means “failed, was not successful”.
You often see a contrast:
- lukken – to succeed, to work out
- mislukken – to fail, to go wrong
Examples:
- Het is gelukt. – It worked / I managed.
- Het is niet gelukt. – It didn’t work / I didn’t manage.
- Het is mislukt. – It failed / It went wrong.
Gefaald comes from falen (to fail), which is more personal and often stronger, sometimes with a sense of being a failure:
- Ik ben voor de toets gezakt. Ik heb gefaald. – I failed the test / I have failed.
In your sentence:
- Mijn eerste poging … is mislukt. = My first attempt did not succeed / failed.
You could also say: - Mijn eerste poging … is niet gelukt. (a bit more neutral, everyday style)
- Mijn eerste poging … is gefaald. (unusual; falen is normally intransitive: mijn poging is gefaald sounds odd; you’d more often say ik heb gefaald.)
Both are possible, but they differ slightly in style and nuance:
- foutloos = without any errors, flawless (one word, a bit more compact, can sound slightly more formal or “neat”).
- zonder fouten = without mistakes (more literal, very common and neutral).
So you could say:
- … om de toets foutloos te maken – to do the test flawlessly.
- … om de toets zonder fouten te maken – to do the test without mistakes.
Both are grammatical; foutloos is just a single-word alternative to zonder fouten.
Formally, foutloos is an adjective, but in this sentence it functions adverbially: it describes how you are going to maken the test.
Dutch often uses adjectives adverbially without changing their form, especially when they end in -loos, -baar, etc.:
- Ik zing vals. – I sing out of tune. (vals modifies zingen)
- Hij werkt hard. – He works hard.
- Ze maakt de toets foutloos. – She does the test flawlessly.
So in om de toets foutloos te maken, foutloos tells us the manner of maken: to do it without mistakes.
Both orders are possible, but they have slightly different emphasis, and the neutral choice is usually:
- de toets foutloos te maken (object first, then manner)
Typical neutral order in Dutch:
subject – (time) – (manner) – object – verb(s)
Ik wil de toets foutloos maken.
If you put foutloos in front of de toets:
- foutloos de toets te maken
this can sound like you’re putting extra focus on foutloos. It’s not wrong, but it’s less neutral and less common than de toets foutloos te maken in this context. The sentence you have uses the most natural order.
In Dutch, every noun is either de-woord (common gender) or het-woord (neuter). The noun toets (test) is a de-woord, so you must use de:
- de toets – the test
- de toetsen – the tests
There is no logical rule that tells you this from the meaning; it’s just part of each word’s dictionary entry. You have to learn:
- de toets (test)
- het examen (exam)
So om de toets foutloos te maken is correct; om het toets… is ungrammatical.
Both are grammatically fine, but they mean different things:
- mijn eerste poging – specifically my first attempt.
- de eerste poging – the first attempt (in general or in the situation), not necessarily emphasizing whose.
Your sentence focuses on your own attempts, so mijn eerste poging makes sense. If you were narrating more neutrally, you could say:
- De eerste poging om de toets foutloos te maken is mislukt, maar de tweede is wel gelukt.
– The first attempt failed, but the second one did succeed.
You can drop eerste, and the sentence is still correct:
- Mijn poging om de toets foutloos te maken is mislukt.
The difference:
- With eerste: implies there will be more attempts (or at least a second one).
- Without eerste: just says the attempt failed; it doesn’t say anything about other attempts.
So including eerste adds the nuance “this was only the first try”.