If you have read all pages in the word order chapter, the title 'word order for the advanced' seems hardly appropriate. You must already be rather advanced to grasp even the basics of that complicated Dutch word order!
Neuter word order
Yet, the guidelines given in this chapter were only basic guidelines. If you follow the guidelines, you will produce 'neuter' sentences. Sometimes, you may want to stress a particular part in the sentence. One of the ways to establish this is by placing that part at the beginning or end of the sentence.
If I want to say that tomorrow, I am going to the cinema with my cousin, I would write:
| Ik ga morgen met mijn neef naar de film.
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This is the neuter word order that we have seen throughout this chapter.
However, you can also choose to place the time? element at the beginning or at the end:
| Morgen ga ik met mijn neef naar de film.
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| Ik ga met mijn neef naar de film morgen.
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Flexible word order
The Dutch word order is flexible, which means you can move the sentence components around a bit and still have a proper Dutch sentence.
Of course, you cannot just randomly do this. On the following pages, we will take a closer look at this flexibility.
First, I will sum up a few abstract guidelines that you need to observe when juggling with the sentence components.
Then, we will move on to a list of examples to illustrate these guidelines.
Mistoqsijiet?