Questions & Answers about De auto staat in de garage.
Why do we use staat (stands) instead of is?
In English you say "The car is in the garage", but Dutch prefers to use posture verbs to describe where things are located. Objects that rest on their base or have wheels (like cars, bicycles, or washing machines) use staan (to stand).
How can I change this sentence to say "The car is there" using er?
In this lesson you are learning about the locative er, which acts as an unstressed "there". To replace the specific location (in de garage), you just put er after the verb. The sentence becomes De auto staat er.
If I start the sentence with In de garage, what happens to the word order?
Dutch has a strict "verb second" rule. If you put the location at the beginning for emphasis, the verb staat must stay in the second slot. This forces the subject (de auto) to swap places with the verb: In de garage staat de auto.
Is garage pronounced the same way as in English?
No, it sounds quite different! Dutch borrowed this word from French. The first 'g' is usually pronounced as the typical Dutch scraping 'g', but the 'ge' at the end is pronounced like the 's' in the English word "measure".