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Questions & Answers about Het eten heeft veel smaak.
Why is the article het used before eten in this sentence?
In Dutch, every noun has a grammatical gender. The noun eten (meaning "food" or "meal") is a neuter noun, and neuter nouns take the definite article het instead of de. This is why the sentence begins with het eten.
What does the verb heeft indicate in this sentence?
Heeft is the third person singular present tense form of the verb hebben, which means "to have." Since het eten is a singular noun, the correct verb form is heeft, translating to "has" in English.
How should the phrase veel smaak be understood?
The phrase veel smaak literally translates to "a lot of taste." In context, it means that the food is very flavorful—it "has a lot of flavor." The word veel means "much" or "a lot," and smaak means "taste" or "flavor."
How does the structure of this sentence compare to typical English sentence order?
The Dutch sentence Het eten heeft veel smaak generally follows a subject-verb-object/complement structure similar to English. Het eten is the subject, heeft is the verb, and veel smaak functions as the object or complement, which closely resembles the English sentence "The food has a lot of flavor."
Could the idea of the food being tasty be expressed in another way in Dutch?
Yes, it can. For example, one might say Het eten is smakelijk, which translates to "The food is tasty." While both expressions compliment the food, het eten heeft veel smaak emphasizes that the food possesses a rich or strong flavor, whereas het eten is smakelijk describes the food as being generally delicious.