Breakdown of Door de storm zijn de dieren 's nachts nogal onrustig.
zijn
to be
het dier
the animal
's nachts
at night
de storm
the storm
door
because of / due to
nogal
quite / rather (considerably, more than average)
onrustig
restless
Questions & Answers about Door de storm zijn de dieren 's nachts nogal onrustig.
How does the prefix on- function in the word onrustig?
It acts much like the English prefix "un-", turning the adjective rustig (calm or quiet) into its opposite, onrustig (restless or turbulent). In Dutch, on- is a highly productive prefix, meaning you can easily attach it to a wide variety of adjectives and participles to create negative versions (like onafhankelijk for independent, or onopvallend for inconspicuous).
Why does the sentence use door instead of omdat to mean "due to" or "because of"?
Door is a preposition, so it must be followed directly by a noun phrase, which in this case is de storm. Omdat is a conjunction, meaning it must introduce a full subordinate clause containing a subject and a verb sent to the end. To use it here, you would have to say something like: Omdat het stormt, zijn de dieren... (Because it is storming, the animals are...).
Why is the verb zijn placed before the subject de dieren?
What exactly does the 's in 's nachts stand for?
It is a leftover from the old Dutch genitive (possessive) case, acting as an abbreviation for des nachts ("of the night"). You will see this frozen historical structure in many common expressions of time, such as 's ochtends (in the morning), 's middags (in the afternoon), and 's avonds (in the evening).
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