Learn Dutch: De collega's beschermen elkaar tegen de boze baas. - The colleagues protect each other against the angry boss.

Elkaar translates to "each other." In this sentence, it acts as the object of the verb beschermen (to protect). It shows that the action goes both ways: one colleague protects another, and vice versa. You use it whenever two or more people do the same action to one another.

Why is there an apostrophe in collega's?

In Dutch, when a noun ends in a single vowel like -a, -o, -u, or -i (like collega or foto), we add an apostrophe before the plural s. If we just wrote collegas, the pronunciation of the a would incorrectly change from long to short. The apostrophe keeps the vowel sound long.

Why does the adjective boos (angry) change to boze here?

Two rules overlap here! First, because baas is a de-word, the adjective in front of it gets an extra -e at the end. Second, adding this -e changes the spelling. The double vowel oo becomes a single o (because the syllable is now open), and the s changes to a z. So, boos becomes boze.

Why do we use tegen for "against" instead of a word for "from"?