Roepen

[leftsidestory]

Hello,

I am using Routldge’s intensive dutch course and have come by an audio clip that is quite confusing.

The person speaking asks:

Kan je niets op kosten van het ministerie iets bijstuderen? De regering loopt daar toch altijd over te roepen?

I am confused with the second sentence there. What exactly does “roepen” here means and what does “lopen” here means?

[BrutallyFrank]

Here the word 'roepen' is used in a slightly derogatory way. They probably mean to say that the government has been urging people to take some course to brush up on their knowledge which the government will finance. Nowadays we have something called a 'STAP-budget', which started this year and has become very popular.

'Roepen' should not be taken literally in this case. Here it's used to exaggerate the fact that there's some campaign from the government. You'd probably hear about it all the time during the campaign, but somehow it escaped the attention of the other person.


'Loopt' (lopen) is also something that shouldn't be taken literally. It means that there's some continuous process going on (voortdurend). In this case the governmental campaign.

Keep one thing in mind: this doesn't mean that the actual campaign is really going on all the time. It's more a personal opinion. Nobody will be using a megaphone to shout (roepen) and it's not something that's continuous (lopen te roepen) ...

[LeSNT2]

In addition to the explanation of BrutallyFrank: 'lopen' literally means 'walking' but we can use it in other ways. Mostly for situations where someone is irritated about the behavior of a second person. For example:

Ze loopt altijd te zeuren over het weer. = She's always whining about the weather.

So in this case it has nothing to do with 'walking' anymore. The person in the example isn't whining while walking, it's just a way of expressing your irritation. Maybe this website can help you too: https://zichtbaarnederlands.nl/en/verb/aan_het (also available in Dutch, French and Polish).

[leftsidestory]

In addition to the explanation of BrutallyFrank: 'lopen' literally means 'walking' but we can use it in other ways. Mostly for situations where someone is irritated about the behavior of a second person. For example:

Ze loopt altijd te zeuren over het weer. = She's always whining about the weather.

So in this case it has nothing to do with 'walking' anymore. The person in the example isn't whining while walking, it's just a way of expressing your irritation. Maybe this website can help you too: https://zichtbaarnederlands.nl/en/verb/aan_het (also available in Dutch, French and Polish).

Thank you for the explanation. I have guessed the meaning of the sentence. But I was more in search for a grammatical understanding of the sentence.