This is even more interesting. ‘Dat hangt’ means ‘it depends’. How can ‘Dat hangt er van af’ also mean ‘in depends’?
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No, the same thing here, the whole verb with preposition is ‘afhangen van’. This means ‘depending on’.
In a sentence this is then split into two: ‘Dat hangt er van af of ik geld genoeg heb’.
The splitting of the verbs is one of the difficulties in the beginning of Dutch. Just don’t worry and later it will come automatically.
‘Dat hangt’ on its own means ‘That hangs’, ‘That is hanging’.
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You sure are fast. Thank you very much.
This is the first time I’ve heard of verb splitting. That is strange.
So far we have the next to impossible word order, the prepositions and adverbs with ten meanings each and now we get to split the verbs.
When searching for a verb try the very end of the phrase.
When reading a sentence search the meaning of the long words, the short ones probably mean whatever you need to link the long ones.
Sad but true: I should get a grammar book.
‘Dat hangt er van af’ actually means ‘It depends on’
Because ‘afhangen van’ needs a subject, ‘it is depending on …’ meaning ‘het hangt af van …’
Thank you. I see you Dutch really want to help the hopeless. It is very nice of you, I do appreciate it.
But … there are still too many words:
‘Dat hangt er van af’
‘Dat’ I understand so it is off the hook.
‘hangt’ is the verb with ‘af’ somehow connected to it. I’ll take your word for it.
‘er’ … what is it doing here? Mystery. According to the dictionary it means ‘there’. It doesn’t make any sense: ‘It there depends on’ … or maybe it does. Is it something like: ‘It depends on the situation’?
‘van’ is clear.
‘af’ …does the separatist ‘af’ have a meaning on its own in this case?
You should be able understand my bewilderment, we need only two words to say ‘It depends on’. Ta-tam: ‘Depinde de’. Of course none of these words are the subject. We don’t need subjects, subjects are useless to us. I see you do and it’s OK. I can accept that, don’t worry. I speak English so I totally understand.
The interesting fact is that when I hear the recording ‘Dat hangt er van af’ does feel like ‘It depends’. Perhaps it has something to do with your intonation. Only when I think about it things get all messed up.
Still … you use too many words.
Let me give it a try.
First of all, in Dutch we sometimes use the word “het” while in English they don’t. Common mistakes by English speakers are that they usually say “Ik weet”, while it should be “ik weet HET”, “ik begrijp” for “ik begrijp HET”. So as a rule of thumb just use the “het” in Dutch.
As for your example “it depends”; “to depend” in Dutch would be “afhangen”. “afhangen VAN” is like “to depend ON”. Because the verb “afhangen” is stressed on the first syllable, which happens to be the prefix, we could call it unstable. Grammar books would call these verbs with “unstable prefixes” seperable verbs, so in a way you cut the “AF” from “afhangen” and put it at the extreme end of the sentence. Then, don’t forget about the “HET” I talked about in the beginning, so the sentence would be something like “Het hangt van het af”. Then there’s another strange thing, when “HET” is followed by a preposition (voorzetsel), “HET” is replaced by “ER” and usually it’s put in front of the preposition and it becomes one word (“ERVAN”). So altogether we get something like: "Het hangt ervan af.
Good luck learning Dutch!
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Thank you very much. You’ve certainly shed some light on the matter. I knew there was something fishy about that sentence, I sensed it from a mile away.
Yes, I will definitely need luck.
My best wishes to you.