LL-L: "Grammar" LOWLANDS-L, 09.APR.2001 (08) [E]

Tue Apr 10 03:00:51 UTC 2001

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  L O W L A N D S - L * 09.APR.2001 (08) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: "Grammar"

Ron and Peo wrote about Dutch _er_, and Low Saxon _daar, d'r_.

To a lesser extent it shows up in English words: thereupon,
therewith, therein, but these survive only as fixed words; you
can't make new ones (there is no *thereconcerning or
*thereopposite), nor can you split them up as in Platt etc.
("Daar hebb ik nix vun.").
You also get the idiom "there is/are/were etc. ..."
I'm not familiar with varieties of English that might reduce
_there_ to something like _er_, but there probably are some.

Can any of our Frisian or Afrikaans speakers tell us if you have
a similar construction, can it be used the same as in Dutch,
and/or in other ways?

Stefan Israel

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From: R. F. Hahn [sassisch at yahoo.com]
Subject: Grammar

It seems to me that in certain contexts Dutch _er_ and Low Saxon (Low
German) _daar_ ~ _d'r_ function in a way pronominally, expressing something

like "the aforementioned," e.g., (D/LS/E)

Ik heb ER veel over gehoord.
Ik heff DAAR veel vun/över höört.
(Ik hev DAAR veel vun/över höyrd.)
I've heard much about IT.

Ik ben ER tevreden mee.
Ik bün DAAR tofreden mit.
(Ik bün DAAR touvreden mit.)
I'm satisfied with IT.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From: Frank Verhoft [frank.verhoft at pandora.be]
Subject: Grammar

Peo Almqvist [trommeltje at netscape.net] wrote:

"I'm interested in the Dutch word 'er' and especially in compound form, cf.

erin, eruit, erop, eraan etc."

Dear Mr Almqvist

I found this text on the net some weeks ago, in an ultimate attempt to
explain the _er_-case to somebody learning Dutch. I don't know if there is
any relation, but she moved to Germany. Though this text might serve as a
basic practical guide, it doesn't say a lot about _daar_ en _d'r_, and to
be
honest, not much about _er_ either.
I'm sorry if it wouldn't proove much help for you, but maybe it does give a

clue about the complexity of _er_ to other people in this list who are
dreaming of learning Dutch.

Sleep with angels,

Frank

http://www.taalthuis.com/course/index.htm
(+click on "grammar references")

Nightmares of er

To a lot of foreigners er is a very confusing word. Not only can it mean a
lot of things (like there, it, or just nothing), it is also hard to study
since it is mostly pronounced as d'r, 'r or even as hardly anything at all.

Besides, it can also be found at several places in the sentence.

First a few examples:

Woon je in Amsterdam? Ja, ik woon er al drie jaar. (Do you live in
Amsterdam? Yes, I'm living there for three years already.)
Er staat een paard in de gang. (There's a horse standing in the hall)
Hoe gaat het ermee? (How are you?)
Hoeveel kinderen heb je? Ik heb er drie. (How many children do you have?
I've got three.)
Je ziet er goed uit. (You're looking good.)
Only in the first two examples er is literally translated - in the other
ones it could be translated, but that would mostly produce a weird
sentence.
Nevertheless, the use of er could very well be explained by it's different
possible meanings if you don't take 'meanings' to literal.

1 - Er means there/here
This could be (a) a not emphasized place, or (b) a non-particular subject.
(a) In the sentence Ja, ik woon er al drie jaar you could replace er by
either hier ('right here') or daar ('over there') if you're pointing
somewhere, but you're not doing that in this case.

(b) In the sentence Er staat een paard in de gang, you could do the same.
If
you want to say Right here - and not over there - there is a horse standing

in the hall, you would indeed use hier and daar: Hier - en niet daar -
staat
een paard in de gang.

Note however, that we are talking about een paard - a horse, so a
non-particular subject. If it would be het paard - the horse, we couldn't
use er. We would either use daar or hier, or - even better - just start
with
the subject: Het paard staat (hier/daar) in de gang.

2 - Er means it or them
Consider these sentences, where the object is replaced:
Ik zie de film - ik zie hem (I see it)
Ik zie het programma - ik zie het (I see it)
Ik zie de boeken - ik zie ze (I see them)
You see that for things you can use hem referring to de words, het
referring
to het words and ze referring to plurals.

Now consider these:

Ik kijk naar de film - ik kijk ernaar (I look at it)
Ik kijk naar het programma - ik kijk ernaar (I look at it)
Ik kijk naar de boeken - ik kijk ernaar (I look at them)
So when there's a preposition, we use er to refer to de words, het words or

plurals. And we place it not only before the preposition, but also attached

to it (like ernaar, erin, erop, ervan etc.). There can however, in more
complex sentences, be something (like a 'when', 'where' or 'how' statement,

or simply niet) between er and the preposition:

Ik kijk er niet naar.
Ik kijk er vandaag liever niet naar.
Watch out, though: er is only used for things - for persons we use the
appropriate pronouns:

Ik kijk naar hem/haar/jou/...

3 - Er means of them when counting
When something is counted and not mentioned, you use er to refer to the
object. You can use van meaning of, but you don't have to and mostly a
Dutchman wouldn't think of using it:
Hoeveel kinderen heb je? Ik heb er drie.
Hoeveel auto's zie je? Ik zie er tien.
Hoeveel huizen heb je? Ik heb er een.
Heb jij een auto? Nee ik heb er geen.
So while in English you have the choice between I have ten or I have ten of

them, in Dutch the current thing to say is only Ik heb er tien (for most
English speaking students it somehow feels weird saying this and they need
to practice it for a while to get it 'into the system').

4 - Expressions
A lot of Dutch phrases containing er are merely to be taken as expressions
and not to be translated literally. In a grammatical sense er would have a
meaning like mentioned above (here/there/it/them/...), but that doesn't
always fully explain the form.
Take, for example Hoe gaat het ermee? It could be translated as How goes it

there with? or even just How goes it with it, but that doesn't explain why
this sentence is used this much (besides Hoe gaat het).

Or Je ziet er goed uit: it could be translated as something like You look
good out of it - but that still doesn't make much sense.

So, in those cases, an expression is better just taken as it is without to
much questioning about the grammatical form.

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