Important announcement

Dear visitor,

Please note that this OpenCourseWare platform will be replaced at the end of 2026 by a new platform (under the same url ocw.tudelft.nl).

Courses and their contents that are currently available the platform will partly be migrated. URL’s for this content will change and content might be unavailable for some time. In addition, some courses will not be available anymore.

If you are linking to specific courses on this platform (for instance for your students), please take timely measures to avoid problems with access. Possible actions are:

  • Download the materials to your local platform (laptop, server)
  • For educators only (including TU Delft lecturers): Contact us at ocw@tudelft.nl and inform us what course you are using in what context (institute, program, period of use, number of students). We will research (in collaboration with the authors of the course) and decide if we will migrate the course, and if yes, can supply you with a new url.

Thank you.

Word Order

Course subject(s) Grammar

Theory

Here’s some terminology first: the Subject (S) of the sentence is “het onderwerp”, the Object (O) “het lijdend voorwerp” and the verb (V) “het werkwoord”.

Examples:

Tom painted the door
S V O
The architect designed the building
S V O

In English regular sentences (not questions) the order cannot be changed, just remember S-V-O. In Dutch, the order can change: Gisteren schilderde Tom de deur. This is impossible in English:Yesterday painted Tom the door is WRONG.

Another example: Tom heeft pijn in zijn arm, omdat hij de deur geschilderd heeft (SOV), is NOT:Tom’ s arm is hurting because he the door painted has.

Actually, English is easier here, so we hope that helps.

Creative Commons License
Self Study English for Dutch Students by TU Delft OpenCourseWare is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at https://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/self-study-english-dutch-students/.
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