Word
Dieses Gerät wird jeden Abend gründlich gereinigt.
Meaning
This device is cleaned thoroughly every evening.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
Breakdown of Dieses Gerät wird jeden Abend gründlich gereinigt.
der Abend
the evening
reinigen
to clean
das Gerät
the device
gründlich
thoroughly
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Questions & Answers about Dieses Gerät wird jeden Abend gründlich gereinigt.
What role does wird play in this sentence?
wird is the third‑person singular present form of werden used here as an auxiliary verb to form the passive voice. It indicates that the action is being done to dieses Gerät by someone (the doer is unknown or unimportant).
How is the passive voice constructed here?
In German present passive you combine the present tense of werden with the past participle of the main verb. So wird + gereinigt (the past participle of reinigen) yields wird gereinigt (“is cleaned”).
Why use the passive voice instead of the active?
Passive voice shifts the focus from who performs the action to the action itself or its recipient. Here, the emphasis is on the device being cleaned every evening, not on who cleans it.
How would you express this sentence in the active voice?
You could say:
Man reinigt dieses Gerät jeden Abend gründlich.
(“One/people clean this device thoroughly every evening.”)
Or:
Jemand reinigt dieses Gerät jeden Abend gründlich.
(“Someone cleans this device thoroughly every evening.”)
What case is jeden Abend, and why?
jeden Abend is accusative. In German, time expressions without a preposition (answering “when?”) usually take the accusative case.
What word order rule do we see with jeden Abend gründlich gereinigt?
German typically follows the Time‑Manner‑Place (TMP) order for adverbials. Here: jeden Abend (time), then gründlich (manner), and the main verb (past participle gereinigt) appears at the end in passive constructions.
What part of speech is gründlich, and why is it placed before the verb?
gründlich is an adverb describing the manner of cleaning. In German, adverbs of manner typically follow time expressions and precede the verb or past participle in simple sentences.
Why is dieses Gerät using dieses and not dieser?
Gerät is a neuter noun (das Gerät). The demonstrative pronoun must match gender, number, and case: nominative singular neuter → dieses.
Why is gereinigt spelled with a -t at the end?
gereinigt is the regular past participle of the weak verb reinigen. Weak verbs in German form their past participles with the prefix ge- and the suffix -t.
Why is Abend capitalized in jeden Abend?
All German nouns are capitalized. Abend (“evening”) is a noun, so it must begin with a capital letter in German.