ABSTRACT
Because prepositions are the most idiomatic part of speech, each with a vast number of meanings in many cases, the following list can only serve as a guide to the usage of Dutch prepositions. To have listed English prepositions with their various translations into Dutch would have been unwieldy and the learner would have been prevented from getting a feeling for the nuances of Dutch prepositions. By doing the reverse it is hoped a certain pattern in the usage of individual Dutch prepositions will emerge and facilitate the learning of them. It should be noted that several are often used as adverbs too, e.g. De soep is op ‘The soup is finished’, Hij is boven ‘He is upstairs’ (see 10.4). Only the most usual of meanings of each preposition in English are given next to the Dutch form at the beginning of each entry (e.g. achter ‘behind, after’) although in reality they may be rendered in a myriad of ways in English.
