"Ik lees een heel boek."

Translation: I read an entire book.

[DerSalz]

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.

[DerSalz]

sure, thank you.

[patiencepolice]

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.

[Jim120781]

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