Breakdown of Het is drie dagen geleden dat wij de magnetron hebben schoongemaakt.
Questions & Answers about Het is drie dagen geleden dat wij de magnetron hebben schoongemaakt.
Both are possible, but they’re slightly different structures:
Het is drie dagen geleden dat wij de magnetron hebben schoongemaakt.
Literally: It is three days ago that we have cleaned the microwave.
This uses the fixed pattern Het is X geleden dat + clause, which measures how much time has passed since an event.Drie dagen geleden hebben wij de magnetron schoongemaakt.
Literally: Three days ago we cleaned the microwave.
Here drie dagen geleden is just a normal time expression at the start of the sentence.
Both are correct and natural. The het is … geleden dat construction is a bit more explicit about the “time since” something happened, but in many contexts they’re interchangeable.
In this sentence het is a dummy subject (also called an “expletive”): it doesn’t refer to any specific thing.
- Dutch, like English, often needs a subject in sentences with zijn (to be).
- Compare English: It is three days since we cleaned the microwave.
The it here also doesn’t refer to anything concrete; it’s just required by the grammar.
So het here is similar to English it in It’s raining, It’s late, It’s three days since….
In Het is drie dagen geleden dat wij de magnetron hebben schoongemaakt, dat is a conjunction (a “subordinating conjunction”).
- It introduces a clause: dat wij de magnetron hebben schoongemaakt = that we have cleaned the microwave.
- It does not stand for a noun (so it’s not a relative pronoun like “that” in the book that I bought).
So here dat is just a linking word connecting the time expression to the event.
Because after dat, the clause becomes a subordinate clause, and Dutch word order changes.
Main clause: Wij hebben de magnetron schoongemaakt.
(Finite verb hebben is in the second position.)Subordinate clause: …dat wij de magnetron hebben schoongemaakt.
In a subordinate clause:- The finite verb (hebben) moves towards the end.
- The past participle (schoongemaakt) is also at the end.
- Together they form a verb cluster at the end: …hebben schoongemaakt.
So the pattern is:
dat + [subject] + [objects] + [auxiliary] + [participle]
In Dutch perfect tenses, you mostly use:
hebben with:
- transitive verbs (verbs that take an object)
- most other verbs
zijn with:
- verbs of movement or change of state (gaan, komen, vallen, worden, etc.)
- many intransitive verbs that describe a change or movement
Schoonmaken (to clean) is a transitive verb: you clean something (here: de magnetron).
Therefore, the perfect tense uses hebben: wij hebben de magnetron schoongemaakt.
Schoonmaken is a separable verb:
- The basic infinitive is schoonmaken (to clean).
- In the perfect tense, separable verbs form their past participle by:
- taking the stem (here: maak- from maken),
- adding ge- and -t/-d,
- and keeping the particle (schoon) attached in front.
So:
- infinitive: schoonmaken
- past participle: schoongemaakt
In a main clause:
- Wij maken de magnetron schoon. (present)
- Wij hebben de magnetron schoongemaakt. (perfect)
In a subordinate clause (like in your sentence), both verbs go to the end:
- …dat wij de magnetron hebben schoongemaakt.
Yes, grammatically you can say:
- Het is drie dagen geleden dat wij de magnetron schoonmaakten.
However, in modern spoken Dutch, the perfect tense (hebben schoongemaakt) is usually more natural here.
Typical tendencies:
Simple past (imperfect) like schoonmaakten is very common in:
- written Dutch
- storytelling and narratives
- certain verbs (especially frequent ones like was, had, ging)
Perfect tense (hebben schoongemaakt) is dominant in:
- everyday spoken language for completed past actions with present relevance.
So: …hebben schoongemaakt is more idiomatic in most everyday situations.
Dutch has two forms for “we”:
- wij – stressed / emphatic form
- we – unstressed / neutral form
Meaning is the same; the difference is in emphasis:
Wij hebben de magnetron schoongemaakt.
Often suggests a bit more emphasis on we (as opposed to someone else).We hebben de magnetron schoongemaakt.
More neutral and more common in everyday speech.
In your sentence, you can use either:
- …dat wij de magnetron hebben schoongemaakt.
- …dat we de magnetron hebben schoongemaakt.
Both are correct; we is slightly more colloquial/neutral.
Every Dutch noun has a grammatical gender:
- de-words (common gender) use de.
- het-words (neuter) use het.
Magnetron happens to be a de-word, so:
- de magnetron = the microwave
There’s no rule you can derive from the ending here; you simply have to learn that magnetron takes de, not het.
That would be an English-style calque and is not idiomatic Dutch.
More natural options are:
- Het is drie dagen geleden dat wij de magnetron hebben schoongemaakt.
- Drie dagen geleden hebben wij de magnetron schoongemaakt.
Sinds is used differently in Dutch, usually with a point in time, not with “it is X time since…”:
- Sinds maandag hebben we de magnetron niet meer schoongemaakt.
= Since Monday, we haven’t cleaned the microwave anymore.
You’d typically say:
- We hebben de magnetron al drie dagen niet schoongemaakt.
Literally: We have not cleaned the microwave for three days already.
Structure:
- We hebben – subject + auxiliary
- de magnetron – object
- al drie dagen – time expression (“for three days already”)
- niet schoongemaakt – negation + past participle
So your original sentence focuses on when the last cleaning was done:
Het is drie dagen geleden dat we…
The negative version focuses on the period of not doing it:
We hebben de magnetron al drie dagen niet schoongemaakt.