Breakdown of De bijen leven al maanden in deze bijenkorf.
in
in
deze
this / these
al
already
leven
to live (to be alive)
de maand
the month
de bij
the bee
de bijenkorf
the beehive
Questions & Answers about De bijen leven al maanden in deze bijenkorf.
Why does the Dutch sentence use the present tense leven if the English translation says "have been living"?
This is a major difference between Dutch and English! When an action started in the past and is still happening now, English uses the present perfect continuous ("have been living"). Dutch simply uses the present tense (leven) combined with a time indicator like al (already) or sinds (since).
To say "for months", why don't we just use voor maanden?
As an English speaker, it is very tempting to translate "for" to voor when talking about time. However, in Dutch, when you want to express how long an ongoing situation has lasted, you use al immediately followed by the time period. So, "for months" becomes al maanden (literally: "already months").
Why is al maanden placed before in deze bijenkorf?
This follows the standard Dutch word order rule of "Time before Place". Time elements like al maanden usually come earlier in the sentence than location elements like in deze bijenkorf.
Why do we use deze for "this" instead of dit in deze bijenkorf?
Whether you use deze or dit depends on the article of the noun. Bijenkorf is a compound word made of bijen (bees) and korf (basket). In Dutch, a compound word always takes the article of its final part. Since it is de korf, the whole word is de bijenkorf, which means we must use deze for "this". You only use dit for het words.
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