Breakdown of De jongen is veertien en het meisje is vijftien.
zijn
to be
de jongen
the boy
het meisje
the girl
en
and
veertien
fourteen
vijftien
fifteen
Questions & Answers about De jongen is veertien en het meisje is vijftien.
Why is 14 spelled veertien when the word for 4 is vier?
Just like English has some spelling quirks with numbers, Dutch has a few too! The word for 4 is vier, but for 14, the i is dropped to make veertien. This is a small exception you just have to memorize.
How do you build numbers like vijftien?
It works exactly like English! You take the base number, which is vijf (five), and stick -tien (teen) on the end to make vijftien (fifteen). Most numbers from 13 to 19 follow this simple pattern.
Since a girl is a person, why do we use het for het meisje?
In Dutch, any word that ends in -je is a diminutive (a word for something small), and all diminutives use het. The word meisje has this ending, so the grammar rule takes over and it becomes a het word, even though it is a person. Meanwhile, jongen does not have this ending, so it gets the standard de.
Does the word en (and) change the word order in the second half of the sentence?
No. The word en simply connects two normal sentences together without messing with their structure. Because of this, the second half just keeps the standard word order: the subject (het meisje) followed by the verb (is).
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