r/learndutch • u/Stars_And_Garters • 2d ago

Grammar "Ten zuidoosten hiervan is een prachtige grote maan te zien."

Hello,

I am a novice learner, English first language. This sentence was provided to me by Google Translate, but I have two questions.

  1. What is the purpose of "ten" in this sentence? How would the sentence change without it?

2. When do I use "grote" instead of "groot"? It's because it's an adjective.

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u/Firespark7 Native speaker (NL) 2d ago

  1. Ten = te + den, te = old fashioned Dutch version of to, den = an old fashioned version of de¹ (the). -> ten = an old fashioned location particle, mainly used in phrases like these that haven't changed since ten was actually used.

  2. Both groot and grote are adjectives. I have a whole post about it on my profile here

¹Directions are neuter (het) nowadays, so either they changed genus from masculine to neuter over time or ten = te + de/den/het (de used to be feminine the, den used to be masculin the, but nowadays we use de for both).

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u/Stars_And_Garters 2d ago

Thanks for the clarification. I'm not great at grammatical terms, I really meant "adjective before the noun".