The word ‘er’ has an image problem. Especially among journalists and people who learn Dutch as a second language. The latter is completely understandable. There is often hardly any chocolate that can be made. Why do you have to say, ‘something bad has happened’, and not, ‘something bad has happened’? Why do you say about your children: ‘I have there five’, and not ‘I have five?’ What does the word even mean in those sentences? For second-talkers who avoid the word, mildness and compassion are in order.
With journalists it is more complicated. It is true that the word ‘er’ is often used in a passive form that is not appropriate for good journalism. ‘It is said…’ By whom? ‘There are deaths’ – who kills, where? It is right that editors intervene here.
But there are those who believe that ‘er’ in written language should be avoided as much as possible. And those people should not be given too much power. ‘Er’ is one of the most beautiful, complex words in our language. It is a modest, serving word that does not come to the fore. It is often obscured in speech. But it does not deserve our contempt.
Compare the sentence: ‘Politicians are corrupt.’ with ‘There are corrupt politicians.’ Certainly for a journalist a difference between day and night. All thanks to ‘er’. Can’t you just say, ‘Corrupt politicians exist’? You can, but then you are forced to put the corrupt politicians at the beginning of the sentence. And since in Dutch the emphasis is often on the end of the sentence, sometimes you don’t want that.
Another example. Take the classic, “There’s a horse in the hallway.” Suppose you want to demolish ‘there’. First option: ‘A horse is in the hallway.’ That sounds like a rule. A horse is in the hallway, a cow is in the meadow, a woman is in the kitchen. You don’t want to go there. The other possibility is: ‘There is a horse in the hallway.’ In principle a fine, straightforward sentence, but you want to keep that great punchline, ‘in the hallway’, until the end of the sentence.
word order
And that’s the beauty of ‘er’, it gives us the opportunity to play with word order. In the absence of cases, Dutch has a murderously compelling word order. Without the word ‘there’ we would have been tied hand and foot. ‘A man is walking down the street’ or ‘a man is walking down the street’, those are the only two flavours. horror. Now there is the lovely alternation of ‘There is a man walking down the street’ and even, ‘There is a man walking down the street’. Still a minor difference in what you draw attention to.
‘Er’ at the beginning of such a sentence also gives the listener the opportunity to slide into the sentence at their leisure. You are not immediately bombarded with information, but you can get used to being talked to. You will be given a quarter of a second to start paying attention. Is that still allowed in our overheated, efficiency-oriented capitalist society? It is no surprise that a Dutch economist proudly wrote a book without the word ‘er’. If you think about it for a moment, ‘er’ almost fits like the slow foodmovement in an ideal of ‘slow language’. Use it to your advantage.