17 Comments
Confused by the word order. As I understand, 'nooit' is a Manner word, and 'het strand' is the direct object.
As the noun is a SPECIFIC direct object, shouldn't the Time/Manner/Place words come after the object? Ie: Ik ga naar het strand nooit.
Please tell me what I have misunderstood :)
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I only know how to break down a sentence with confidence in English, but "het strand" looks like it ought to be the object of the preposition "naar", with "naar het strand" being a prepositional phrase modifying the verb "ga". And if Time/Manner/Place indicates a word order, it seems like "nooit" indicating Time makes sense coming before "naar het strand" indicating Place.
Time-Manner-Object-Place, and in this case "naar het strand" is a place, there is no object in this sentance
Shore would be kust. Much like in English, shores and beaches aren't necessarily one and the same. They can be, but oftentimes they aren't.
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So stranden are necessarily flat/ easily accesible? I would say a beach is a type of shoreline. A rocky shore is not a beach, but all beaches are shores.
No. Because the sentence is void of context, when you change beach to shore, you are changing the meaning of the sentence entirely. It's like changing airplane to vehicle and expecting the meaning to remain clear.
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I was asking about the connotations of the Dutch word "strand". In English "shore" is a very general word. Beaches are a type of shore. I was asking if the Dutch word "strand" really implies that the shore is fairly flat and pebbly/sandy (ie translates exactly to "beach") or if it is more general. English has the word "coast" which I would guess would translate very well with "kust", but English doesn't use "coast" the same way it uses "shore". "Coast" is a less defined area, zoomed-out a bit to mean a fairly wide area near the ocean. A very large lake (where you can't see the opposite shore) might also be said to have a "coast". "Shore" can take this meaning also (eg "we're going to the shore" means "we're going to the ocean (where there is a beach)") but it also takes the meaning of a more zoomed-in area of exactly where the water meets the land for almost any body of water bigger than a puddle or small pond. It probably even encompasses the word "bank", since a riverbank is a type of shoreline.
Your question was "Why not shore?" and I answered that question.
But to answer your doubts, these are the definitions of strand and kust as they occur in a dictionary:
- strand: streak of sand alongside the sea
- kust: streak of land alongside the sea
Knowing this, a strand is indeed a kust and not all kusten are stranden. So yes, it's safe to say the meanings are virtually identical as long as we're referring to a sea or ocean. A riverbank is rarely referred to as a kust, for example. This would be an oever.
I hope that removes some of your doubt.
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"Strand," meaning 'beach' or 'sandy area along the coast' is a beautiful word that appears in all Germanic languages, including Old and Middle English. You can find it in Simon and Garfunkel's version of the folk song "Scarborough Fair," which dates back to the 1600s. The singer ironically (or sarcastically) asks his ex-lover to find him an acre of land "between the salt water and the sea strand" to prove her love, which is of course an impossible task.
