Word
De stamboom van de vorst valt makkelijk te vinden in het archief.
Meaning
The family tree of the monarch can easily be found in the archive.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of De stamboom van de vorst valt makkelijk te vinden in het archief.
in
in
vinden
to find
het
it
makkelijk
easy
Questions & Answers about De stamboom van de vorst valt makkelijk te vinden in het archief.
Why does the sentence use valt ... te vinden instead of kan worden gevonden?
Valt te followed by an infinitive is a very common and idiomatic way in Dutch to say that something 'can be done' or 'is doable'. While kan makkelijk gevonden worden is grammatically correct, valt makkelijk te vinden is often preferred to express that a task is possible or easy to accomplish.
Doesn't vorst mean 'frost'?
Yes, it does! Vorst is a homonym. It means 'frost' in the context of freezing weather, but it also means 'monarch', 'ruler', or 'prince'. Context makes it clear here, since frost doesn't typically have a family tree (stamboom).
Since the current lesson is about wiens and wier, how could I rewrite this to include one of them?
You could make 'the monarch' the subject of a new sentence and describe him using a relative clause. Because vorst is a masculine word, you use wiens (whose). For example: De vorst, wiens stamboom makkelijk te vinden valt, was erg machtig. (The monarch, whose family tree can easily be found, was very powerful).
What is the literal translation of stamboom?
It translates closely to 'tribe tree' or 'trunk tree'. Stam means 'trunk' (of a tree) but also 'tribe' or 'lineage'. Combined with boom (tree), a stamboom is the standard Dutch word for a 'family tree'.