Word
We moeten het lettertype van de lay-out veranderen.
Meaning
We must change the font of the layout.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of We moeten het lettertype van de lay-out veranderen.
moeten
to have to, must
veranderen
to change
van
from (possession, starting point) / made of
we
we (unstressed form of wij)
Questions & Answers about We moeten het lettertype van de lay-out veranderen.
How would I apply this lesson's compound adverbs to say "We must change the font of that" (referring to the layout)?
To point back to a specific inanimate object like the layout, you replace the preposition van and the noun with a compound pronominal adverb. For exact pinpointing ("of that"), you combine daar (there) + van (of) to make daarvan. The sentence becomes: We moeten het lettertype daarvan veranderen.
Why is it het lettertype when the word letter is a de word?
Lettertype is a compound noun made of de letter and het type. In Dutch, compound nouns always inherit the article and gender of their final part. Since type is a neuter word (het), the entire compound becomes het lettertype.
Why does the English loanword lay-out have a hyphen here?
Dutch has specific spelling rules for English loanwords. While English often writes them as one solid word (layout), Dutch spelling dictates that a noun formed from an English verb plus an adverb or preposition usually gets a hyphen. You'll see this same rule in words like de make-up and de drive-in.
As a quick refresher, why is the verb veranderen sitting at the very end of the sentence?