Learn Dutch: Er staat een sofaatje in de woonkamer. - There is a little sofa in the living room.

The root word is sofa, which ends in a long 'a' sound. If we simply added -tje to make sofatje, the 'a' would sound short. To keep the original long 'a' sound in the diminutive form, we must double the vowel, making it sofaatje.

Why does the sentence use staat instead of is?

When describing where things are located, Dutch prefers posture verbs over zijn (to be). Because a sofa has legs and rests upright on the floor, we use staan (to stand). It literally translates to 'There stands a little sofa in the living room.'

Could I just start the sentence with Een sofaatje?

It would sound very unnatural. In Dutch, you generally don't start a sentence with an indefinite subject (a noun with een). Instead, you use the dummy subject er (there) at the beginning, just like we say 'There is a sofa' in English instead of 'A sofa is in the living room'.

How is the word woonkamer formed?

It is a compound word that combines the stem of the verb wonen (to live) and the noun kamer (room). In Dutch compound nouns, the final word dictates the article, so because it is de kamer, the combined word is de woonkamer.