Breakdown of Waarom schijnt dit onopvallende kanaal zo snel te groeien?
snel
fast
dit
this (neuter)
waarom
why
groeien
to grow
zo
so (to such a degree)
te
to (infinitive marker)
schijnen
to seem / be said to (hearsay)
onopvallend
inconspicuous
het kanaal
the channel
Questions & Answers about Waarom schijnt dit onopvallende kanaal zo snel te groeien?
How does the subject raising structure work in this sentence?
The subject dit onopvallende kanaal is pulled into the main clause as the subject of schijnt, and the action it performs becomes the infinitive phrase te groeien. If we didn't use this structure, we would use a dat-clause with the dummy subject het: Waarom schijnt het dat dit onopvallende kanaal zo snel groeit? The raised version is much more common in everyday Dutch.
Why use schijnt here instead of lijkt or blijkt?
These three evidential verbs are easy to mix up. Schijnen means "to seem" based on hearsay or what people are saying, so the speaker likely heard or read about the channel's growth from others. Lijken also means "to seem" but is usually based on your own direct personal observation. Blijken means "to turn out" or "to be proven" based on hard facts or evidence.
Why is te groeien placed at the very end of the sentence?
This sentence uses the classic Dutch sentence brace. The conjugated main verb schijnt comes early in the sentence, right after the question word Waarom. All other verb parts, which in this case is the infinitive phrase te groeien, get pushed to the very end of the clause, wrapping around the rest of the information.
Since kanaal is a het-word, why does onopvallend get an -e ending?
For het-words, you only drop the -e from the adjective if the noun is indefinite, meaning it is preceded by een, geen, or nothing at all. Because this sentence uses the specific demonstrative word dit, the noun is definite and the adjective takes the standard ending, making it dit onopvallende kanaal.
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