{"id":5250,"date":"2017-12-11T08:00:37","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T08:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/?p=5250"},"modified":"2019-03-17T21:08:33","modified_gmt":"2019-03-17T21:08:33","slug":"curious-words-in-dutch-2-voorkomen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/dutch\/curious-words-in-dutch-2-voorkomen\/","title":{"rendered":"Curious Words In Dutch 2: Voorkomen"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are many strange words in a language. Words that are just not used much, words that are pronounced in a weird way… Just words that have something curious about them! And those are the ones we look at in this series. Today, we look at\u00a0voorkomen.<\/em><\/p>\n

Previous posts in this series:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Curious Words in Dutch<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Prevent, Seem or Appear?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Image by Keagan Henman at Unsplash.<\/p><\/div>\n

Voorkomen<\/em>. It is a pretty normal word, and primarily means three things: “to appear”, “to prevent” and “to seem”. As a noun, it can even mean “occurrence, incidence” and “appearance”. To clarify that, here are some sentences:<\/p>\n

Jij komt mij bekend voor.\u00a0<\/em>(you look\/seem familiar to me.);<\/p>\n

Kan de VN een oorlog voorkomen?\u00a0<\/em>(Can the UN prevent a war?);<\/p>\n

Het komt voor.\u00a0<\/i>(It happens.);<\/p>\n

Jij komt voor in dat boek!\u00a0<\/em>(you appear in that book!)<\/p>\n

Het voorkomen aan aardgas is niet erg groot meer.\u00a0<\/em>(The natural gas deposits are not very large anymore.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Snapshot of the entry at vandale.nl, one of the most prominent dictionaries of the Netherlands<\/p><\/div>\n

It can be quite convoluted, as you can see in the sentence above. The meanings for “to happen\/appear” and “to prevent” of the word are the most common, and confusion, in my experience, ensues mostly between these two meanings. One nice way that as a verb, you can find the difference is that\u00a0voorkomen\u00a0<\/em>is split in a sentence depending on meaning:<\/p>\n

Voorkom je de publicatie van die film?\u00a0<\/em>(Are you preventing the publication of that film?)<\/p>\n

Kom je in die film voor?\u00a0<\/em>(Do you appear in that film?)<\/p>\n

Komen dat soort films veel voor?\u00a0<\/em>(Are there many of such films?)<\/p>\n

So, you can see that “to prevent” keeps the word\u00a0voorkomen\u00a0<\/em>together in its declination:<\/p>\n

ik voorkom\u00a0<\/em>(I prevent)<\/p>\n

jij\/U voorkomt\u00a0<\/em>(you\/you (formal) prevent)<\/p>\n

hij voorkomt\u00a0<\/em>(he prevents)<\/p>\n

wij voorkomen\u00a0<\/em>(we prevent)<\/p>\n

jullie voorkomen\u00a0<\/em>(you (pl.) prevent)<\/p>\n

ze voorkomen\u00a0<\/em>(they prevent)<\/p>\n

For comparison, with “to appear”:<\/p>\n

ik kom voor\u00a0<\/em>(I appear)<\/p>\n

jij\/U komt voor\u00a0<\/em>(you\/you (formal) appear)<\/p>\n

hij\u00a0komt voor\u00a0<\/em>(he appears)<\/p>\n

wij komen voor\u00a0<\/em>(we appear)<\/p>\n

jullie komen voor\u00a0<\/em>(you (pl.) appear)<\/p>\n

ze komen voor\u00a0<\/em>(they appear)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And what about its third prevalent meaning, “to seem”? You would use the declination as for “appear”, but usually it is used in the passive:<\/p>\n

Komt hij jou ook wat vreemd voor?\u00a0<\/em>(Does he also seem a bit strange to you?)<\/p>\n

Dit komt mij niet zo doordacht voor.\u00a0<\/em>(This does not seem well thought through to me.)<\/p>\n

So it is easier to distinguish in context from “appear”. Also, “appear” and “seem” can be synonyms, so you should not have problems with that!<\/p>\n

Are there words that confuse you in their meaning? That seem ambiguous to you? Did you find\u00a0voorkomen<\/em> one of such words? Let me know in the comments below!<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

There are many strange words in a language. Words that are just not used much, words that are pronounced in a weird way… Just words that have something curious about them! And those are the ones we look at in this series. Today, we look at\u00a0voorkomen. Previous posts in this series: Curious Words in Dutch…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":5252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[60713,3590],"tags":[503854,117769,358731,3628],"class_list":["post-5250","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-2","category-dutch-language","tag-curious-words","tag-dutch-grammar-2","tag-dutch-language","tag-dutch-vocabulary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t