Dummy Subjects: Het and Er

Every Dutch main clause needs a subject in the verb's agreement slot — even when there is, logically, no subject to speak of. It's raining has no rainer; there's a problem has no one doing the existing. To fill that empty grammatical slot, Dutch reaches for one of two dummy subjects (Dutch loze onderwerpen, "empty subjects"): het and er. They look interchangeable to a beginner and are not. English collapses both jobs onto two words too — it and there — but the Dutch division of labour does not line up neatly with the English one, which is exactly why this is a B2 topic and not an A1 one. Get the split wrong and your Dutch will sound subtly broken in a way that is hard to self-diagnose.

The core split is simple to state and worth memorising before anything else: het is the dummy for weather, time and conditions, and the anticipatory subject that points forward to a clause; er is the existential/presentative subject that introduces something into the scene, and the subject of the impersonal passive.

Het: weather, time and conditions

When a clause describes the weather, the time, the temperature, or a general ambient condition, Dutch uses het as the subject — just as English uses it. There is no hidden referent; het is pure scaffolding holding up the verb.

The error English speakers make here is rarely choosing er — it is dropping the subject entirely, because the temptation is to translate is koud directly. Dutch will not allow a tenseless, subjectless Is koud; the slot must be filled.

Het: the anticipatory subject

The second job of het is to be a placeholder that points forward. When the real content of the subject is a whole clause (a dat-clause or an infinitive clause), Dutch often parks a dummy het in the subject slot and lets the heavy clause follow later. The het "anticipates" the clause that is coming.

This mirrors English it almost perfectly (It's nice that…, It's hard to…), so it is the easier of the two het jobs for English speakers. The thing to notice is structural: the dummy het is the grammatical subject, the verb agrees with het (always singular), and the real propositional subject arrives downstream.

Er: the existential and presentative subject

Now the harder half. Er is the dummy that introduces something into existence or onto the scene — the rough equivalent of English there is / there are. It is the standard way to present new, indefinite information: when you want to say that something exists, or that someone is somewhere, and that something is fresh to the conversation, you open with er.

Two things make er trickier than het. First, the verb does not agree with er — it agrees with the postponed real subject (staat for iemand, liggen for drie koekjes). Er is a placeholder for position, not for agreement. Second, er is overwhelmingly used with indefinite subjects (een, iemand, drie, geen). A definite, already-known subject usually does not trigger presentative er — you would just say De man staat voor de deur ("The man is at the door"), no dummy needed.

Er: the subject of the impersonal passive

The second job of er is to be the subject of the impersonal passive — a construction Dutch has and English largely lacks. When an activity is described with no agent and no object, Dutch can still build a passive around the bare action, and it needs er to fill the empty subject slot.

English has no clean equivalent — we paraphrase with "there is dancing" or "people are dancing" — which is why English speakers tend to leave er out and produce the ungrammatical Wordt gedanst. In the impersonal passive, er is not optional flavour; it is the grammatical subject, and the clause is broken without it.

The split at a glance

A useful way to keep them apart: het stands in for a condition or a coming clause (it agrees with the verb, always singular); er stands in for a position in the scene (it does not agree — the real subject does). If your clause is "X exists / X is there / something is going on," reach for er. If it is "the weather/time is…" or "it is [adjective] that/to…," reach for het.

A note on the difference from English

English uses it for both weather (it's raining) and anticipation (it's nice that…), which maps cleanly onto Dutch het. The trap is the existential: English there is/there are maps onto Dutch er, but English also tolerates definite there ("there's the man I told you about") more freely, and English has no impersonal passive at all. So two of Dutch er's jobs — strong preference for indefinites, and the agentless passive — have no tidy English anchor, and that is exactly where learners overreach with het or drop the dummy entirely.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Dutch always fills the subject slot, even when there is no logical subject — with a dummy het or er.
• Het covers weather, time and conditions (Het regent, Het is laat) and the anticipatory subject that points forward to a clause (Het is fijn dat…).
• Er is the existential/presentative subject for new, indefinite things (Er is een probleem) and the subject of the impersonal passive (Er wordt gedanst).
• Het agrees with the verb (always singular); er does not — the verb agrees with the postponed real subject.
• The classic errors are dropping the dummy in weather clauses, using het where er is needed for existentials, and omitting er in the impersonal passive.