# Er hoort een garage bij



## DearPrudence

Hello everyone 

So, I'm still on my exercises and I'm confused (yes, I should go to eat to get some strengths ).
With two sentences we are supposed to create one sentence. But I don't quite understand the second sentence & how it works:
*Een huis. Er hoort een garage bij.* (-> Een huis waar een garage bij hoort)

My two problems:
- I don't know what "*horen bij*" means. Something like "to go well with"? (être assorti) (seems more obvious with "Er hoort een rok bij" but with a house and a garage, I don't quite get it )

- I don't quite understand how "er" works here.
Is it the same as:
"*Er is / zijn*" (there is / there are) but with a different verb than "zijn"

Or is it something like "there / here", but that I also saw in the middle of sentences until now (like ... "Ze werkt er graag" ("y" in French))

And I'm not even going to talk about the fact that we have just seen that "er" at the beginning of sentences became "daar" 

Thanks for shedding any light on this


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## sound shift

"Een huis. Er hoort en garage bij." = "A house. There is a garage with it." "To go well with" is not the right idea.


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## DearPrudence

sound shift said:


> "To go well with" is not the right idea.


It's what I think... But how come a verb that means "hear" can simply stand for "be"? 
(what about "Een jasje. Er hoort een rok bij"? I still don't understand this verb  )

+ So, that was my first guess. You can say "there is / are" with another verb than "zijn"?


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## sound shift

Prudence,

This "horen" is not "to hear" but "to belong". The garage belongs to the house.


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## DearPrudence

Don't blame me. I'm a complete beginner and my tiny dictionary simply says that *"horen"* = "hear" or *"bij elkaar horen" *= être assorti (to go well together or something of the kind), which could work with een jasje & a rok (why not) but seemed weird with a house & garage.
Don't worry, I won't bother you any longer, moving on...
(I don't even know why I should even try to understand the mechanical grammar exercises I'm doing after all... Silly me! Sorry)


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## sound shift

I'm not blaming you; I'm just stating a fact.

I've got a large dictionary ("Van Dale Handwoordenboek Hedendaagse Nederlands"), which states that one of the meanings of "horen" is "(ergens) zijn plaats hebben". I believe this means "to belong" (please can native speakers confirm/refute?)


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## elroy

1. Een garage hoort bij het huis. - A garage belongs to the house. (A garage goes with the house.)

2. Er hoort een garage bij. - A garage belongs to it. (To it belongs a garage.)
er bij - to it 

but in Dutch it's common to separate _er_ and the preposition that goes with it.​3. Daar hoort een garage bij. - same as 2, but more emphatic. Emphasizes that the garage belongs to _the house_.

4. een huis waar een garage bij hoort - a house to which a garage belongs
waar bij - to which 

Again, it is common to separate _waar_ and the preposition that goes with it.​The word _er_ has many functions. This is just one of them. You should try not to confuse them.


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## Joannes

Right. Two questions that are hard to answer. But you're right to ask them because you _should_ try to understand mechanical excercises as well. (Many grammars fail there.)

I'll start with the *er* issue. The origin of *er* is a reduced *daar* 'there' (*). Sometimes they can be used interchangeably. As we discussed in this thread, *daar* sometimes functions as a demonstrative (like *die*, *dat*) combined with a preposition. Well, *er* in this sentence is an atonic *daar* with this function:

(0) *Bij het huis hoort een garage.*
(1) *Daar hoort een garage bij.*
(2) *Daarbij hoort een garage.*
(3) *Er hoort een garage bij.*
(4) **? Erbij hoort een garage.*

The difference between (1-2) and (3-4) is the emphasis on the demonstrative. The word order of (1) and (3) is more common, (2) would only be used with some focus, which is why (4) is virtually ungrammatical, since this focus would also demand a tonic pronoun.

Then, the meaning of the verb. *Horen* means 'to hear', but can also be used in the sense of 'to be befitting', 'should', e.g.

(5) *dat hoort niet* 'ça ne se fait pas!'
(6)* hoor jij niet op school te zijn?* 'shouldn't you be in school?'
(7) (on the telephone, explaining how to get to some place): *dan kom je aan een rotonde. er hoort een standbeeld te staan in het midden* (= *er zou een standbeeld moeten staan in het midden*) 'then you arrive at a roundabout. there should be a statue in the middle'

*Ergens bij horen* 'to belong to something' (*ergens* literally means 'somewhere' but remember the demonstrative-spatial connection again). It does not frequently mean 'to go well with something' (**).



DearPrudence said:


> And I'm not even going to talk about the fact that we have just seen that "er" at the beginning of sentences became "daar"


We can't help with things you don't even talk about  but I'm guessing this can be connected to *er* = *daar* as demonstrative thing.

(*) There's a lot of tonic-atonic distinctions in Dutch and they are not always easy to master. There are already quite some threads about this as far as personal pronouns are concerned. Note that sometimes written full forms are pronounced as reduced atonic forms in spoken language. The same happens for *daar*, which is often pronounced *er* or *d'r*. Note that the articles *de* and *het* (often without /h/, sometimes reflected in spelling by <'t>) could well be analysed as reduced pronunciation of demonstrative pronouns *die* and *dat*. In the same way, the indefinite pronoun *een* (pronounced /ən/, sometimes indicated by the spelling <'n>) can be analysed as an atonic form of the numeral *één* 'one' (pronounced /en/). (This is typologically completely normal by the way, check this and this out, should you be interested.) And then there's also *eens* which can be pronounced /ens/ (sometimes made explicit by a spelling <ééns>) or as /əs/, /ɪs/ (sometimes made explicit by a spelling <'ns> or <'s>) - the former means denotes one specific time ('just once') the second some indefinite time (~ 'once upon a time').

(**) In that sense *ergens bij passen* is more common. It's interesting that *passen* can also be used to mean 'to be befitting', by the way. There's no sharp dividing line between *ergens* *bij* *horen *en *ergens* *bij passen*. Take for example this sentence which could be a task in some test: *verbind de concepten die bij elkaar horen/passen*: 'connect the matching concepts'.

Right, way too long, my apologies, but I hope it helps, just ignore what you don't care about.


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## DearPrudence

Thank you everyone, that is much clearer now 



Joannes said:


> The origin of *er* is a reduced *daar* 'there' (*).


Actually I hadn't seen it that way with the book I have. I rather had the impression it was the other way round. Thank you once again 


elroy said:


> This is just one of them. You should try not to confuse them.


Believe it or not but my 4-week-old Dutch & I don't do it on purpose to mix things up


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