Opinions, Agreeing & Disagreeing
Opinions, Agreeing & Disagreeing
Dutch has a set of fixed frames for stating and contesting opinions, and two of them are structurally odd: agreement is expressed with het eens zijn met, and 'I think so' comes out as Ik denk van wel.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
vinden for opinions, denken for beliefs
Ik vind het te duur. Ik denk dat het te duur is.
I think it's too expensive. I think it's too expensive.
vinden — literally 'to find' — is the verb for value judgments and takes an object plus an adjective: Ik vind het mooi. denken is for beliefs about facts and takes a dat-clause. English uses 'think' for both, so Dutch splits one English verb along a line English speakers do not usually notice: evaluating versus believing.
het eens zijn met: agreement takes a fixed het
Ik ben het met je eens. Daar ben ik niet mee eens.
I agree with you. I don't agree with that.
The construction is eens zijn ('to be agreed'), and it requires the pronoun het, which refers to nothing identifiable and cannot be dropped: Ik ben het met je eens. The word order puts eens at the very end, so the pieces are scattered across the clause. Omitting het is the single most common error here — 'ik ben met je eens' is wrong.
Ik denk van wel: answering with van plus a particle
Komt hij? — Ik denk van wel. / Ik denk van niet.
Is he coming? — I think so. / I don't think so.
To answer 'I think so' or 'I think not', Dutch uses van wel and van niet after verbs like denken, geloven, hopen and zeggen. There is no way to derive this from the English: van is a preposition doing no obvious work, and wel/niet stand in for the whole clause. Ik hoop van wel, Ik geloof van niet and Ik dacht van wel are all high-frequency and worth learning as units.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- I think that ...
- English
- In my opinion
- English
- I agree with it
- English
- I disagree with it
- English
- I think so
- English
- That's right
- English
- It's not that bad
- English
- on one hand ... on the other
- English
- the point of view
- English
- the argument
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