"De vrolijke man kleedt zich eindelijk weer aan."
Translation:The cheerful man finally puts on clothes again.
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I was wrong, but I like my mistake: "The happy man brings his own weather."
I wrote 'The cheerful man dresses again finally' which is exactly the same as 'puts clothes on again' so it is reported.
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vrolijk ~ frolic. Ha! I'm posting this here only because it might help someone remember the word more easily.
Verbs are often at the end, e.g. "ik heb mijn schoenen gepoetst", "zij wil liever de grootste portie eten", etc. I think it was also more like that in Old English, which is probably where Yoda got his syntax from. ;)
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EDIT: This response is not relevant to the original question. I'll keep the content here, however, as someone may find it helpful.
Eindelijk kleedt de vrolijke man zich weer aan.
By shifting eindelijk to the beginning of the clause it directs more emphasise towards "finally".
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I don't think it's that important in English to put "finally" at the beginning of the sentence as in Dutch.
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You know what.... I confused your question with a thought I had at the time regarding another concept xD I've been contributing much more to discussions over the past few days than I usually do, and I suppose I simply mixed up what I was thinking with the actual content of your question. Apologies for the mix up
I agree, your sentence is sound, and it should be an accepted translation of the original sentence.
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I also thought of lovely old words like "merry" and "jolly" - surely they would work?!
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I wrote "the cheerful man finally puts clothes on" and it was marked wrong
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"To dress" and "to dress up" are not the same in English. Just the ordinary act of putting on clothes is "to dress" (not usually any need to make it reflexive by adding "himself" - you can, but it doesn't add anything to the meaning - if he was dressing anyone else you would say so). "To dress up" is usually for a party or special occasion. It doesn't just mean putting on clothes, but smart or special clothes. In this example, the man just dressed, or got dressed, or put on clothes (any of those would be acceptable), but there's no evidence he "dressed up" - i.e. made a special effort.
"To dress up" could also mean in a costume - e.g. for a play. To "dress up" as Cinderella, for example.
Finally, "to dress up" can be used colloquially in English, to describe making something look better - sometimes, but not always, with the intent to deceive. So I could say: "I dressed up my presentation with lots of graphs" (might mean the presentation by itself was not very good, so I tried to disguise it).
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Oh, thank you for the detailed explanation - it turns out that I didn't use the verb 'dress up' correctly during my 2year stay in England. (Although nobody ever said that to me, I guess it wasn't a very confusing mistake :) )
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Most of us in England are shy about correcting a foreigner's English unless they ask us to - it seems a bit rude - especially if we can still work out the meaning. That would probably be why nobody said anything. Or perhaps they thought you were very particular about clothing, and always liked to "dress up"? ;)
You can also "dress up" because it's cold, by the way - i.e. put on lots of clothes.
And you can "dress down" - i.e. deliberately more relaxed/casual. Some employers have: "Dress down Fridays" - either weekly, or once a month, when employees are not expected to wear formal business attire - they can wear their normal weekend clothes. I'm sure this concept is not unique to the UK - I expect NL has it, too.
Sometimes there's a charity element - i.e. you're expected to pay a small "fee" - which goes to charity - for the privilege of wearing jeans to the office.
I believe lower-grade staff in NL generally wear smart casual clothes, not "shirt and tie" as we do in the UK, as they understand that it's the work you do that matters, not how nice your tie is. ;) EDIT: Why on earth would someone downvote this? WTH?