Viele Fehler im Plan sind in der letzten Besprechung korrigiert worden.

Many mistakes in the plan were corrected in the last meeting.

Breakdown of Viele Fehler im Plan sind in der letzten Besprechung korrigiert worden.

• sein: to be
• in: in
• viel: many
• der Plan: the plan
• im: in the; (masculine or neuter, dative)
• die Besprechung: the meeting
• der: the; (feminine, dative)
• der Fehler: the mistake
• letzt: last
• korrigiert werden: to be corrected

Questions & Answers about Viele Fehler im Plan sind in der letzten Besprechung korrigiert worden.

Why does the sentence use sind … korrigiert worden instead of just wurden korrigiert?

Both are grammatically correct passive forms; the difference is mainly tense and style.

• sind korrigiert worden = present perfect passive
  → Typical in spoken German; also common in written German.
  → Roughly corresponds to English “have been corrected”.

• wurden korrigiert = simple past (preterite) passive
  → Very common in written German, reports, narratives.
  → Roughly corresponds to English “were corrected”.

In practice, for this sentence you could also say:

• Viele Fehler im Plan wurden in der letzten Besprechung korrigiert.

Same meaning in context; choice is more about style and regional preference (spoken vs written) than a big difference in meaning here.

Why do we need both korrigiert and worden? Why not just sind korrigiert?

German has two different passive constructions:

1. Vorgangspassiv (event passive – focuses on the action):

   • Form: werden (in some tense) + past participle
   • Perfect form: sein + Partizip II + worden
   • Example:
     
     • Viele Fehler sind korrigiert worden.
       → Many errors have been corrected (the correcting happened).

2. Zustandspassiv (state passive – focuses on the resulting state):

   • Form: sein + Partizip II
   • Example:
     
     • Viele Fehler sind korrigiert.
       → Many errors are corrected (they’re now in a corrected state).

So:

• sind korrigiert worden = an action took place in the past (they got corrected).
• sind korrigiert = they are now in a corrected condition, without explicitly talking about the event of correcting.

In your sentence, we are talking about what happened in the last meeting, so the event passive (sind korrigiert worden) is the right choice.

Why is the auxiliary sein used here and not haben?

In the present perfect passive (Vorgangspassiv), the auxiliary is always sein, not haben.

The structure is:

• sein (present) + past participle of main verb + worden

So:

• Viele Fehler (subject)
• sind (sein, present tense)
• korrigiert (past participle of korrigieren)
• worden (marks the passive in the perfect)

Compare:

• Active perfect: Wir haben viele Fehler korrigiert. (auxiliary: haben)
• Passive perfect: Viele Fehler sind korrigiert worden. (auxiliary: sein)

So you never say haben korrigiert worden in standard German passive; it’s always sind / ist … worden in the perfect passive.

What’s the difference in meaning between sind korrigiert worden and wurden korrigiert? Does the perfect imply a stronger result?

In this context, the difference is small and mostly about tense choice, not about a stronger result.

• Viele Fehler … wurden … korrigiert.
  → Simple past; presents the correction as a past event, typical in written reports.

• Viele Fehler … sind … korrigiert worden.
  → Present perfect; often used in speech, can stress that this past event is relevant to the present situation (e.g. why the plan looks better now).

In everyday use, both simply say that during the last meeting, many mistakes were corrected. Any nuance about “present relevance” is usually weak and depends more on context than on the tense itself.

Can I say Viele Fehler im Plan sind korrigiert instead? How does the meaning change?

Yes, that’s grammatically correct, but the meaning changes:

• Viele Fehler im Plan sind korrigiert worden.
  → Action/event passive: many errors were corrected (in that meeting).

• Viele Fehler im Plan sind korrigiert.
  → State passive: many errors are corrected (that’s their current state).

In your original sentence, we explicitly refer to an event in the last meeting. So the event passive (sind korrigiert worden) is better; it focuses on what happened there, not just on the current state of the plan.

Why is it im Plan and not in dem Plan, im den Plan, or something else?

im is a standard contraction in German:

• in + dem = im

We use dem because:

• The noun Plan is masculine: der Plan.
• The preposition in here expresses a location (where the errors are), so it takes the dative case.
• Masculine dative singular of der is dem → in dem Plan → im Plan.

So:

• im Plan = in dem Plan (dative masculine singular)

im den Plan is not possible; den would be accusative, which is wrong here because we’re not talking about motion into the plan, just position in the plan.

Why is it in der letzten Besprechung and not in die letzte Besprechung?

Again, this is about the case used after in:

• in
  • where? (location, no movement) → dative
• in
  • where to? (movement into something) → accusative

Here, in der letzten Besprechung describes where the corrections took place (inside the meeting, during the meeting), so it’s location → dative.

• Feminine noun: die Besprechung
• Dative singular: der Besprechung
• With definite article and adjective in dative: in der letzten Besprechung

If you said in die letzte Besprechung, that would be accusative and would normally imply movement into the meeting (e.g. Wir gehen in die letzte Besprechung – We are going into the last meeting), which doesn’t fit here.

Why is it viele Fehler and not vielen Fehlern or something else?

Viele Fehler is the subject of the sentence, so it’s in the nominative case:

• Who/what was corrected? → Viele Fehler → nominative plural.

Forms:

• Singular: der Fehler (nominative)
• Plural nominative: die Fehler

The quantifier viele is in its nominative plural form:

• viele Fehler (many errors) – nominative plural

The form vielen Fehlern would be dative plural, and we don’t need dative here for the subject. That’s why viele Fehler is correct.

Can I change the word order of the prepositional phrases? For example:
In der letzten Besprechung sind viele Fehler im Plan korrigiert worden.

Yes, that’s perfectly correct.

German is quite flexible with the order of adverbials (time, place, manner, etc.). Common patterns:

• Default-ish order (very typical):
  Viele Fehler im Plan sind in der letzten Besprechung korrigiert worden.
  → subject first, then place (im Plan), then time (in der letzten Besprechung).

• Emphasis on the time:
  In der letzten Besprechung sind viele Fehler im Plan korrigiert worden.
  → brings the meeting into focus.

• Emphasis on location in the plan:
  Im Plan sind in der letzten Besprechung viele Fehler korrigiert worden.

All these variants are grammatically fine; the differences are in emphasis and flow, not in basic meaning. The finite verb (sind) must still be in position 2, and korrigiert worden must stay at the end as the “verb cluster.”

What would an active-voice version of this sentence look like?

You can convert the passive to active by adding a subject who performed the action (e.g. wir, man, die Teilnehmer):

• In der letzten Besprechung haben wir viele Fehler im Plan korrigiert.
  → In the last meeting, we corrected many errors in the plan.

Or more impersonal:

• In der letzten Besprechung hat man viele Fehler im Plan korrigiert.
  → In the last meeting, many errors in the plan were corrected (someone/people corrected them).

The information is the same; passive hides or downplays the agent, while active specifies it.

Why does the adjective end with -en in der letzten Besprechung?

The ending -en on letzten comes from:

• dative case
• definite article
• feminine singular noun (die Besprechung)

Pattern:

• Feminine dative singular with definite article:
  in der
  • Adjective(-en)
    • Besprechung

So:

• in der letzten Besprechung

When an adjective comes after a definite article in dative singular (any gender), it usually takes -en:

• in dem alten Plan (masc. dative)
• in der letzten Besprechung (fem. dative)
• in dem großen Büro (neut. dative)

That’s why it’s letzten, not letzte, in this phrase.