De dagopvang is bij een gastouder.

Dagopvang means daycare or daytime childcare.

It is made up of:

• dag = day
• opvang = care, supervision, childcare

So the literal idea is care during the day.

Because dagopvang is a de-word.

A useful rule for compound nouns in Dutch is that the whole compound usually takes the article of the last part:

• de opvang
• so: de dagopvang

Dutch normally writes compound nouns as one word.

So:

• dag
  • opvang = dagopvang

This is very common in Dutch. English often uses two words where Dutch uses one:

• English: day care / daycare
• Dutch: dagopvang

Here bij means something like with or at.

In this sentence, bij een gastouder means that the daycare takes place with a childminder or at a childminder’s home.

So bij is not always a literal next to. It often means:

• at someone’s place
• with someone
• under someone’s care

A gastouder is a childminder, usually someone who looks after children in a home setting.

It is a specific Dutch childcare term. It does not usually mean a literal guest parent in English, even though the word looks like that.

So in natural English, gastouder is usually translated as:

• childminder
• sometimes home daycare provider

Because een means a / an, so it refers to one non-specific childminder.

• een gastouder = a childminder
• de gastouder = the childminder

You would use de gastouder if the listener already knows which childminder you mean.

It has a very simple structure:

• De dagopvang = subject
• is = verb
• bij een gastouder = prepositional phrase

So the pattern is:

Subject + verb + prepositional phrase

This is normal Dutch main-clause word order. The finite verb is comes in the second position.

Not necessarily.

It can describe:

• the location of the daycare
• or the type of childcare arrangement

So it may mean not only that the daycare is physically at a childminder’s place, but also that the childcare is provided by a childminder rather than by a daycare center.

A rough guide:

• bij sounds a lot like bye
• een is often pronounced weakly, like uhn
• ou in gastouder sounds like ow in house
• the Dutch g in dagopvang and gastouder is usually a guttural sound, not the English g in go

A rough approximation of the whole sentence is:

duh DAKh-op-fangk is bye uhn KHAST-ow-der

That is only approximate, but it can help as a first step.