In Nederland fiets je veel, dat is een gewoonte.
In the Netherlands you cycle a lot, that is a habit.
Breakdown of In Nederland fiets je veel, dat is een gewoonte.
zijn
to be
een
a/an
veel
much / many / a lot of
in
in
fietsen
to cycle
dat
that (het-words)
je
you (unstressed form of jij)
Nederland
the Netherlands
de gewoonte
the habit
Questions & Answers about In Nederland fiets je veel, dat is een gewoonte.
Why use je here if the sentence isn't talking about me specifically?
In this sentence, je acts as an indefinite subject pronoun. Just like in English when we say "you cycle a lot" to mean "people in general cycle a lot", Dutch uses je to talk about a general truth or things that apply to everyone in a certain place.
Why is the word order fiets je instead of je fietst?
Because the sentence starts with the location In Nederland, the verb and the subject must swap places. This is called inversion. In a regular Dutch main clause, the working verb must be in the second position, so fiets comes right after the location.
Shouldn't the verb have a 't' at the end, making it fietst je?
Normally, verbs with je as the subject get a -t ending. But there is a special rule in Dutch: when je or jij comes directly after the verb, you drop the -t. That is why it is simply fiets je.
Why use dat instead of het in dat is een gewoonte?
Dat (that) is a demonstrative pronoun used here to point back to the entire situation described in the first half of the sentence (the fact that people cycle a lot). It places a bit more emphasis on the idea than het (it) would, exactly like saying "that is a habit" rather than "it is a habit" in English.
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