Modal Verb - should

[miksta1988]

Hey everyone, i just started learning dutch a couple of weeks ago and am now trying to jump this hurdle


"It should have been forbidden"


Modal verb + past passive construction...
All in all, 4 verbs, and i have no idea which to conjugate and the appropriate syntax...

Thanks in advance...

[ngonyama]

Het zou verboden geweest moeten zijn.

But this is pretty clumsy...

And yes there are five verbs because English should has an imperative connotation that Dutch zou lacks.
If you say

Het zou verboden geweest zijn.

That would translate into It would have been forbidden

[ngonyama]

In colloquial Dutch it would probably become something like:

Dat moest verbooie weze!

[miksta1988]

Thanks
But without putting it into the conditional with zou Would it be better to keep the sentence in its active form?

Can I say, (and forgive me, I just started learning the language so I am bound to make may grammatical mistakes);

"Zij hebben het verboden gemoeten"

[Quetzal]

Het zou verboden geweest moeten zijn.

But this is pretty clumsy...

And yes there are five verbs because English should has an imperative connotation that Dutch zou lacks.
If you say

Het zou verboden geweest zijn.

That would translate into It would have been forbidden

I do not agree. That's not just clumsy, it's just a word-for-word translation of the English sentence. I don't think that's a correct Dutch sentence.

"Het had verboden moeten zijn" is the most obvious translation, I think.

You're right that English "should" requires two verbs in Dutch, but when it's used as a past tense, those two verbs should be "hadden" and "moeten". It's only when "should" is used as referring to the future that "zou moeten" works.

[Quetzal]

Thanks
But without putting it into the conditional with zou Would it be better to keep the sentence in its active form?

Can I say, (and forgive me, I just started learning the language so I am bound to make may grammatical mistakes);

"Zij hebben het verboden gemoeten"

That's a good try, and you're correct as far as your choice of which verbs to use goes, at least. The sentence you're looking for is "Ze hadden het moeten verbieden". But that's fairly complicated, because it's one of those cases where Dutch uses an infinitive ("moeten") where one would indeed expect a past participle ("gemoeten"). Definitely not beginner stuff, but then, your whole question is definitely not beginner stuff.

The "zij" or "ze" makes little difference, but as a rule you should use "ze" except when it requires particular emphasis; it's the same way with "je" and "jij", and "we" and "wij".

And "verbieden" simply because that is the correct infinitive. "Verboden" is the past participle, and of course also the adjective.

[miksta1988]

Thanks Quetzal...

In a few months when i have a better grip on the language i will ask you why you used the infinitive and not the past participle... Hehe

Problem being: I am impatient and I want to know why you used the infinitive and not the past participle now!!! haha
But I better not clog my mind up just yet

[ngonyama]

In general, a modal verb replaces the participle by the infinitive if there is another verb that follows:

Ik kan zwemmen -> Ik heb kunnen zwemmen

Without the second verb zwemmen the participle is used:

Ik kan dat -> Ik heb dat gekund

However, sometimes it gets complicated; you can get long strings of infinitives this way, e.g.:

:Ik zou hebben moeten kunnen blijven zitten lezen~ It should have been possible for me to remain seated in order to read.