Breakdown of Anna morst soep op haar nieuwe blouse.
Questions & Answers about Anna morst soep op haar nieuwe blouse.
morsen means “to spill” (especially liquids) in a neutral sense.
knoeien can also mean “to spill,” but it more broadly means “to make a mess,” “to tamper,” or “to botch something,” often carrying a negative or careless connotation.
When you use a possessive pronoun (like haar) in Dutch, you omit the article. So haar nieuwe blouse literally means “her new blouse.”
If you weren’t using a possessive, you’d say:
- een nieuwe blouse (“a new blouse”)
- de nieuwe blouse (“the new blouse”)
In Dutch, adjectives preceding a noun get an -e ending when the noun is:
• a common‐gender noun with a definite article or possessive pronoun (like haar)
• a plural noun
Since blouse is a common‐gender noun (de‐word) and we have haar, the adjective takes -e: nieuwe blouse.
op indicates movement onto a surface, like “onto.”
- Anna morst soep op haar nieuwe blouse = “Anna spills soup onto her new blouse.”
- in would mean “into” (inside the blouse).
- over implies “all over” (covering), so over haar blouse changes the nuance to “all over her blouse.”
Dutch is a V2 (verb-second) language: the finite verb must occupy the second position in the sentence.
Here:
1) Anna (first position)
2) morst (verb in second position)
3) soep and op haar nieuwe blouse (the remainder)
If you place another element first (time, place, etc.), the verb still remains in the second slot.