Breakdown of Deze koude wijn drinkt heerlijk weg op het terras.
op
on
koud
cold
deze
this / these
de wijn
the wine
het terras
the terrace / the outdoor café
heerlijk
delicious, lovely
wegdrinken
to go down easily
Questions & Answers about Deze koude wijn drinkt heerlijk weg op het terras.
Why does the sentence say the wine is drinking (drinkt) if it is the object being consumed?
This is the facilitative middle voice. Dutch often uses an active verb with an adverb of manner (like heerlijk) to describe how an object undergoes an action. Instead of a passive sentence like 'the wine is drunk wonderfully', you make the wine the subject. English does this sometimes too, like saying 'this wine drinks smoothly' or 'this car drives well'.
What is the function of weg in this sentence?
It is the separable prefix of the verb wegdrinken. While drinken just means to drink, wegdrinken implies consuming something smoothly, continuously, or easily. In this context, it translates closely to a drink 'going down' well.
Why is the prefix weg placed before op het terras instead of at the very end of the sentence?
Placing the separable prefix at the very end (drinkt heerlijk op het terras weg) is grammatically correct. However, keeping weg directly after heerlijk is very natural here because heerlijk weg functions as a tight conceptual unit describing the experience, while the location (op het terras) is just extra context added at the end.
As a refresher, why does koud get an -e ending here?
Wijn is a de-word. Whenever an adjective comes before a noun and is preceded by a definite word like deze (this), the adjective gets the standard -e ending, making it koude.
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