Breakdown of Wat een formatie! Duizenden vogels vliegen massaal voorbij.
een
a/an
wat
what
de vogel
the bird
vliegen
to fly
voorbij
past, gone by
duizenden
thousands
de formatie
the formation
massaal
en masse / massively
Questions & Answers about Wat een formatie! Duizenden vogels vliegen massaal voorbij.
Why does this sentence use duizenden instead of duizendtallen, given the lesson's focus on the -tallen suffix?
For 100 and 1,000, Dutch typically just adds -en to create honderden (hundreds) and duizenden (thousands). While duizendtallen is a valid word, it is mostly used in mathematical contexts. The -tallen suffix is much more crucial for the number 10 (tientallen = tens/dozens), because the word tienen simply refers to the digit '10' (like rolling tens on dice).
Is Wat een always the structure used for exclamations like 'What a...'?
Yes, whenever it is followed by a singular countable noun like formatie. It functions exactly like English: you use Wat een for singular nouns (Wat een vogel! = What a bird!), but you drop the een for plural or uncountable nouns (Wat veel vogels! = What a lot of birds!).
Why is voorbij placed at the very end of the sentence?
This is because voorbijvliegen (to fly past) is a separable verb. In a standard main clause like this one, the conjugated verb (vliegen) takes the second position in the sentence, and the separable prefix (voorbij) is kicked all the way to the end.
The word massaal is translated as 'en masse'. How common is this adverb?
It is extremely common. While you can actually use the French loanword en masse in Dutch, or the formal expression in groten getale (in large numbers), using massaal is the most natural, everyday way to describe a large crowd of people or animals doing something collectively.
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