"It are beautiful shoes", is of course really bad English. This is, however, how we say it in Dutch. Yes, really. It is precisely this sort of discrepancies between languages that causes automatic translators such headaches.
Where the English say "They are [+noun]", the Dutch say "Het zijn [+noun]." As you can see, singular 'het' (it) does not correspond with plural 'zijn' (are).
| Het zijn inheemse planten.
| They are indigenous plants.
[lit: It are indigenous plants]
|
| Het waren aardige buren.
| They were nice neighbours.
|
We only do this when 'they' is linked to a noun. '(Indigenous) plants', and '(nice) neighbours' are nouns.
In the examples below, ze (they) is linked to an adjective. Here, we do not see the strange 'it are' phenomenon.
[De planten]
Ze zijn inheems.
| [the plants]
They are indigenous.
|
[De buren]
Ze waren aardig.
| [the neighbours]
They were nice.
|
'Indigenous', and 'nice' are adjectives.
Can you see the difference?
Het zijn inheemse planten.
Ze zijn inheems.
| They are indigenous plants.
They are indigenous.
|
Het waren aardige buren.
Ze waren aardig.
| They were nice neighbours.
They were nice..
|
We encounter the same phenomenon with the demonstratives dit and dat?.
Questions? 