On 7/15/06, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:
> Gary Shannon wrote:
>
> Or how about Dutch?
>
> Steek er nu mee de niet-brandende fakkel aan om de deur te openen.
>
> You've got "nu" (now) in the middle of "ermee" (with it), and "aan"
> which is part of the word "aansteken" (to light; the sentence refers to
> lighting a torch) at the end of the phrase with "steek" at the beginning.
Better would be:
Steek er nu de niet-brandende fakkel mee aan om de deur te openen.
Even more can go inside the "er .. mee" construct:
Steek er de niet-brandende fakkel vandaag nog met beide handen
Light it [the non-burning torch] [today still] [with both hands]
binnenshuis mee aan om de deur te openen.
indoors with up [in-order the door to open].
Note that the separable verb "steek .. aan" encompasses even more.
A very good website about word order in Dutch sentences is:
http://www.dutchgrammar.com/en/wordorder/1b.html
It taught me a lot of things I didn't know (as a L1 speaker of Dutch)
and which I really needed for the Dutch lessons I'm giving at the moment.
René