Gevonden

Today I went out with the intention of taking a photo for a different post but what I wanted wasn’t there, so that will just have to wait until another time! However, when I was returning, I noticed that one of the neighbours had taped something to his garage door.

When I got a little closer, I noticed that it was an electrical cable and not only had he taped it to the garage door (with quite a generous helping of tape I must say!), he had also written a very crucial word underneath ‘gevonden’. This was to ensure all passer-bys that he wasn’t planning to collect electrical cables and decorate his garage door with them but instead that he had found this cable and if it was yours he was quite happy for you to remove it and be reunited. This is something that I notice happens quite a lot in the Netherlands. On a regular basis you will find a lone glove, a child’s toy or some other lost item placed on a nearby wall to await its owner’s return. I think it is quite sweet and always wonder how many items are actually collected.

So, let’s spend a little time today looking at the verb ‘vinden’, meaning ‘to find’ and some of the ways you might add it to your vocabulary if you aren’t already using it. I have added the literal translations in brackets so you can see a little better how the word order in Dutch is formed. I figure you can work out how to translate each one into a nicer sounding English sentence. Here we go:

1. You could use ‘vinden’ in the present tense to tell us all about something you find tasty. Since you are going to talk about yourself, you can drop the -en ending, making your sentence look like this:

Ik vind komkommer lekker. [I find cucumber tasty.]

2. Of course there is no need to find everything tasty, so you can also let us know what you don’t like the taste of:

Ik vind champignons niet lekker. [I find mushrooms not tasty.]

3. If you are desperate to find out if your friend, neighbour or a random stranger on the street likes a certain something, then you can ask them, like this:

Vind je wortels lekker? [Find you carrots tasty?]

4. Now, let’s assume you were polite and tried a rather odd looking food item that your host presented you with and you didn’t like it. Since you have already tried it, we move to the past tense:

Ik vond de taart niet lekker. [I found the cake not tasty.]

5. Lastly, let’s think about my friendly neighbour and his electrical cable. He was a bit lazy and just wrote one word of the sentence but since we are overachievers here, we will go for the full sentence:

Ik heb een kabel gevonden. [I have a cable found.] Or even more exciting – Ik heb een lotto kaartje gevonden. [I have a lottery card found.]

Now it’s your turn! I’ve seen how you guy’s tackle the word of the day so feel free to go wild, filling the comments section with all the things you find tasty, not tasty and/or something that you found today.