"We have lived together for sixty years."

Vertaling: Wij hebben al zestig jaar samengewoond.

[anothernobody]

Someone kindly comment on this: "We hebben voor zestig jaar samen gewoond". Do I really need "al"? And why must "samen" and "gewoond" be together?

[MentalPinball]

Hi Stephen,

I think that if you omit the al it could be interpreted as if these two people are not living together anymore, there's ambiguity in the message; while if you include it, it's clear that they still live together.

And samengewoond is the past participle of samenwonen, which is a compound verb. Remember that compound verbs (like the English phrasal verbs) are formed by combining a verb with an adverb, a preposition, or both. In Dutch, the adverb/preposition is always a prefix, which means it's 'glued' at the beginning of the verb. (Some compound verbs are formed by adding a noun, but these are less frequent -oh, and they are always inseparable).

Within compound verbs we can distinguish separable verbs and inseparable verbs. Samenwonen is separable.

For more information, please check the following link:
http://dutchgrammar.com/en/?n=Verbs.Co01

[MentalPinball]

Btw: by 'glued' I mean that you have to write both parts of the compound together, as one word. Sorry, it seems I spend too much time teaching kids :P (I teach EFL to primary and secondary school kids).