I will never really speak Dutch
A friend of mine just came out with the following line: “Ik ben er nu naar aan het luisteren.” Babelfish tries heroically: “I am there now to for listening” which even manages to recognise that “het luisteren” is not, in this context, “the listening”.
What does it actually mean? “I’m listening to it now.” And even though I got that, I don’t think I’ll ever get the instinct that would let me put that “naar” in the right place. Or indeed, include it in the sentence at all…
Comments
It's just the Dutch version of the present progressive tense. Ik ben aan het luisteren is 'I'm listening'. Ik ben aan het eten, I'm eating etc. etc. The use of this is also more or less colloquial.
It's the present progressive tense whose use is more or less colloquial. Naar is just the preposition 'to'. het luisteren is merely a nominalized infinitive.
Sorry your comments got eten by Spam Karma -- it thinks people who post to several older posts in succession are spambots rather than new readers.
All that you say is true, and *yet*... it's the combination of lots of features that are individually not too difficult for English speakers, but put 'em together and it becomes... interesting, to say the least.
(Depending on your background that "merely" might be a bit surprising also ^_^)