In Dutch you can often use "er" as a sort of temporary/provisional subject. For example: "Er klopte niets van" or "Er wachtte een man op haar". For this reason English teachers come across less than perfect sentences such as: "There waited a man for her." In English you can only use "there" as a temporary subject in combination with the verb "to be", such as: "There are many pupils in this room". In other cases you have to figure out what the real subject in the sentence is and make your sentence from there. For the examples you could say something, like: "Nothing was right", and "There was a man, who was waiting for her. / A man was waiting for her."
So be warned: Dutch "er" can be tricky to translate in Dutch.
dinsdag 9 november 2010
Why?
Ladies and gents,
I have just started checking your work and it is still far too early to say anything about results. However something is bothering me and I want to get it off my chest: "How come that you leave open items when you just have to fill in one letter as a sort of Multiple Choice?" It seems to me that you always have a chance that your answer is correct and your answer is never worse than plain wrong. So, please, in future always give it a go.
I have just started checking your work and it is still far too early to say anything about results. However something is bothering me and I want to get it off my chest: "How come that you leave open items when you just have to fill in one letter as a sort of Multiple Choice?" It seems to me that you always have a chance that your answer is correct and your answer is never worse than plain wrong. So, please, in future always give it a go.
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