Breakdown of Haar gezicht mag dan wel mooi lijken, maar het is meestal nep.
zijn
to be
maar
but
mooi
beautiful
mogen
to be allowed to / may
haar
her
het
it
dan
then
meestal
usually
wel
indeed, surely (contrastive particle)
nep
fake
het gezicht
the face
lijken
to seem
Questions & Answers about Haar gezicht mag dan wel mooi lijken, maar het is meestal nep.
How does mag dan wel work here, and can I just drop the word dan?
The pattern mag dan wel... maar is a classic way to express a concession in Dutch, meaning 'may well... but'. Here, mag is not giving permission; it expresses epistemic modality, meaning it acknowledges a possibility or truth before introducing a contrasting fact. The word dan is essential here to signal this concessive meaning. Without it, mag wel mooi lijken would sound like someone is literally permitted to look beautiful.
Why do we use het in the second part of the sentence instead of zij?
The pronoun het refers back to Haar gezicht. Since gezicht is a neuter noun (a het-word), you must use het to say 'it is usually fake'. Even though the sentence starts with the feminine possessive Haar (Her), the pronoun always agrees with the grammatical gender of the object itself, not the person who owns it.
Why doesn't the verb invert after maar in the second clause?
The word maar is a coordinating conjunction, just like en, of, and want. These conjunctions connect two main clauses but act like an invisible bridge between them, so they do not affect the word order of the clause that follows. Therefore, the second clause keeps the standard Subject-Verb order: het is.
Could I use schijnen instead of lijken to mean 'seem' in this sentence?
You could, but the meaning shifts slightly. Lijken means 'to seem' or 'to look like' based on your direct observation or physical impression, which fits looking at a face perfectly. Schijnen means 'to seem' in the sense of a rumor or what people say ('it is said to be'). Since you are judging the face's physical appearance directly, lijken is the better choice.
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