"Ik lees een heel boek."

Translation: I read an entire book.

[deactivated user]

Heel means very, Right?? But entire?

[jamesjiao]

Correct. The English word 'wake' could mean 'to stop sleeping' or 'the trail left in the water by a ship'. It's not entirely strange for a word in another language to be polysemous.

[deactivated user]

sure, thank you.

[hrotha]

Fun fact: "heel" and "whole" are cognates. When you take into account that Dutch uses adjectives as adverbs, you get something like "whole" vs "wholly". And it is easy to see how a word like "wholly" would have its meaning diluted a bit until it starts getting used as a general intensifier - see the word "full", which was used as an adverb meaning "very" in archaic/old timey English, as in "full well".

[Fred-3-CMY]

Weird how something like "full well" has become the slang of adolescents in Germany, meaning "very well": "voll gut" - but it may be "out" already.

[Fred-3-CMY]

It is also a cognate of German "heil" and derived/related words such as "heilen", "Heiler".
For instance: "Ist das Spielzeug noch heil?" ("is the toy still intact/not yet broken into pieces?"), in the sense of "complete", "whole".

[galaxyl3]

Why is "een heel boek" instead of "een hele boek"? Is it thanks to 'het boek'? When it comes to 'het boek', 'heel' should be used.

[GewoonLeonYT]

With 'een' you use 'heel'

[Jim120781]

I read a whole book? Can't understand why that was rejected

[jimghunter]

Not much different than "I read the whole book."

[Isa333918]

"a" book vs "the" book is enough to make it incorrect but I am with you on the "whole" book vs "entire"

[Patience_e]

Hey I read books too!

[jamesjiao]

My hearty congratulations.

[jamesjiao]

"I am reading an entire book." should not be a correct solution!!!

[wucnuc]

I must be missing something. Why is that not a correct solution?

[jamesjiao]

Honestly can't remember what the context was. Something's changed since then.

[Simius]

Thanks! Fixed now.

[rufousdave]

Should "i am reading ..." be "ik ben aan het lezen"? If so, where does "een heel boek" fit?

[jamesjiao]

Progressive tense in English could be expressed in a variety of ways in Dutch. Your way is more appropriate if you want to emphaisize on the continuity of the action. Please try not to make one-to-one mappings with grammatical concepts across different languages; it simply doesn't work. On the 'een heel boek' part, you would place it right after 'ben' - 'ik ben een heel boek aan het lezen'.

[talideon]

Almost, though it should be 'an', not 'a'.

[jamesjiao]

Thanks. Hope Simius saw this message. Honest mistake lol.

[mmgery]

What is the difference between "vol" and "heel"?

[El2theK]

Vol mainly translates as full, heel mainly as whole/entire.