Word
Het meisje draagt een jurk.
Meaning
The girl is wearing a dress.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Questions & Answers about Het meisje draagt een jurk.
How would I change this sentence to say 'This girl is wearing this dress' using the words from this lesson?
Because meisje is a het word, you use dit to say 'this': dit meisje. Jurk is a de word, so you would use deze: deze jurk. The new sentence would be: Dit meisje draagt deze jurk.
Why is it het meisje and not de meisje?
In Dutch, any word that ends in the diminutive suffix -je (which indicates something small) is automatically a het word. Even though a girl is a female person, the strict grammatical rule for -je words takes over.
Why doesn't the Dutch sentence use a word for 'is' to say 'is wearing'?
Dutch does not generally use an 'is doing' form like English does. The single present tense verb draagt translates to both 'wears' and 'is wearing' depending on what makes the most sense in English.
Does draagt always mean 'is wearing'?
The verb dragen translates to both 'to wear' and 'to carry'. You can usually figure out which one it means from the context of the sentence. Since a dress is a piece of clothing, 'is wearing' is the right choice here.