Learn Dutch: Het hout valt eruit. - The wood falls out of it.

In Dutch, you cannot combine a preposition like uit (out of) with the regular word for "it" (het). Instead, you replace "it" with er and attach the preposition to the end. This creates the fused word eruit.

Can eruit be split into two words in other sentences?

Yes! In this short sentence, they stay together at the end. But if you add more information, like when or how it happens, er and uit will usually split. For example, to say "The wood falls out of it today," you put the time word in the middle: Het hout valt er vandaag uit.

If we were talking about multiple boxes, how would we say "The wood falls out of them"?

You would use the exact same sentence! The word er is used to replace both singular "it" and plural "them" when referring to things. So eruit can mean "out of it" or "out of them" depending on the context.

Why does the word hout use the article het?

hout (wood) is a neuter noun in Dutch, so it always takes the definite article het. Just like in English, wood is treated as an uncountable material, so you will almost always see it in this singular form.