Grammatica - loco

11
Verbs
264
Ik heb geen geld bij me/Hij heeft geen geld bij zich.
I have no money on me/He has no money on him.
Hij keek achter zich.
He looked behind him.
De officieren hadden veel soldaten onder zich.
The officers had a lot of soldiers under them.
The expression op zich(zelf), which grammatically speaking belongs in
this category, is usually best translated by ‘actually’ or ‘in fact’; here too
the use of -zelf adds emphasis:
Op zich is dat niet zo erg. (stress on zich)
Actually that’s not so bad.
Het is op zich een vreemde uitdrukking. (stress on zich)
It’s a strange expression in fact.
11.17.6
Use of z’n eigen as a reflexive pronoun
In substandard speech one often hears m’n eigen, je eigen, z’n eigen etc.
instead of the reflexive me, je, zich etc. This practice, although common,
should not be copied as it sounds ‘plat’:
Ik ben m’n eigen kapot geschrokken.
I got a terrible shock.
Jij kent je eigen niet.
You don’t know yourself.
Note: Dutch, like English, uses the reciprocal pronoun elkaar ‘each other’
in sentences such as the following, not the reflexive pronoun as is the case
in French and German:
We hebben elkaar in de stad ontmoet.
We met each other in town.
11.18
11.18.1
Transitive and intransitive verbs
Overgankelijke en onovergankelijke werkwoorden
Very often difficulties arise with verbs because the distinction between
transitive and intransitive is not fully understood: transitive verbs are