Word
Het gebouw op het eiland is heel hoog.
Meaning
The building on the island is very high.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Questions & Answers about Het gebouw op het eiland is heel hoog.
Since this lesson is about comparatives, how would I change this sentence to say the building is higher?
To make hoog (high) comparative, you add -er. But because of Dutch spelling rules for keeping vowels long in open syllables, one o drops out, making it hoger. You could say: Het gebouw is hoger dan de boom (The building is higher than the tree).
Why doesn't hoog get an -e ending here?
Because it comes after the verb is rather than directly before the noun. Adjectives only get an -e ending when they are placed right in front of the noun they describe, as in het hoge gebouw (the high building).
Both gebouw and eiland use het. Is there a rule to help remember this?
Gebouw starts with the prefix ge-, and almost all nouns starting with ge-, be-, or ver- are het words. Eiland ends in -land, and all words ending in -land are also het words.
Wait, doesn't heel mean "whole"?