Grammatica - loco

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Chapter 15
Er
Er, which literally means ‘there’ and is in origin an unstressed form of
daar, has four functions in Dutch: repletive, partitive, pronominal and
locative. The four are dealt with separately below. It is possible to have
various combinations of these in one clause; the complications arising
from such combinations are dealt with in the notes following the description
of the four functions, see 15.5.
15.1
Repletive er
Indefinite subjects are very commonly placed after the verb in Dutch with
er introducing the verb in much the same way as ‘there’ can be used in
English, but the practice is much more common in Dutch and is often
employed where a construction with ‘there’ would not be possible in English,
as some of the examples below illustrate:
Er loopt een man op straat.
There is a man walking in the street/A man is walking in the street.
Er moeten nog veel meer mensen komen.
There should be a lot more people coming/A lot more people should
be coming.
Er bracht een juffrouw koffie rond.
A young woman brought coffee around.
Toen kwam er een pastoor.
Then a priest arrived.
Wat is er gebeurd?
What happened?
Wie is er vandaag jarig?
Who has a birthday today?