Grammatica - loco

12
Conjunctions
294
Onze kennissen hadden ons verteld dat het een erg
interessante plaats was en (dat) we er makkelijk een paar
dagen zouden kunnen doorbrengen.
Our friends had told us that it was a very interesting place and (that)
we could easily spend a few days there.
It is nearly always possible for stylistic reasons in both English and Dutch
to place a subordinate clause in front of the main clause in a compound
sentence. In English this has no effect on word order but in Dutch the
subordinate clause assumes the role of first idea in the main clause (i.e. in
the sentence as a whole) and thus inversion of subject and verb is required
in the main clause. It is also usual to insert a comma between the two
clauses to keep the finite verbs of each clause apart (see 3.1.2):
Ik maakte de bedden op terwijl zij de afwas deed =
Terwijl zij de afwas deed, maakte ik de bedden op.
While she washed up, I made the beds.
When a co-ordinating conjunction is followed by a subordinating conjunction,
the subordinating one governs the word order of the following clause,
but not that of the co-ordinate clause in which it is embedded; the subject
and verb of the following co-ordinate clause invert as above because the
subordinate clause takes on the role of first idea in the overall sentence.
In the sentence below omdat ik erg slecht geslapen heb is the subordinate
clause that has been embedded in the sentence Ik blijf thuis en ik ga terug
naar bed:
Ik blijf thuis en omdat ik erg slecht geslapen heb, ga ik terug
naar bed.
I’m staying home and because I slept really badly, I’m going back to
bed.
A subordinate clause can also be embedded in another subordinate clause,
in which case one must remember to put the verb of the interrupted clause
to the end when one returns to it. In the following example, which is
stylistically not ideal but nevertheless possible, als je een vreemde taal
leert has been embedded in the clause dat je gewoonlijk je eigen taal beter
kunt begrijpen:
Ik vind dat als je een vreemde taal leert, je gewoonlijk de
grammatica van je eigen taal beter kunt begrijpen.
I think that if you learn a foreign language you can usually understand
the grammar of your own language better.