Dutch phrasing question

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WaxPoetic
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Dutch phrasing question

Postby WaxPoetic » Fri May 28, 2021 12:39 am

Just a quick question for any proficient or native Dutch speakers

If I wanted to express an amount of something plus a small non-specific additional amount -- for example "Two years and a bit." or "50 cats and then some" -- how would it usually be phrased in Dutch?

My brain wants to just phrase it the way I would in English, "een beetje meer" or something like that, but I get the feeling there's a specific Dutch phrase for that sort of thing that I'm not thinking of. Wish there was a way to search concepts instead of just single-word-direct-translation vocabulary. Thanks in advance.
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urubu
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Re: Dutch phrasing question

Postby urubu » Fri May 28, 2021 7:32 pm

'Ruim x' would work in those cases (x = twee jaar / vijftig katten).
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Le Baron
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Re: Dutch phrasing question

Postby Le Baron » Fri May 28, 2021 8:21 pm

En nog wat (meer).

Ruim, as above, is also perfectly good if you're not specifying, but estimating.

However, if you were talking about a definite number of countable objects, then any more e.g. cats is more than 50 and you should be counting them. The "and then some" in (U.S.) English is more a particle phrase - I'm not a linguist so I don't know the actual definition - than an actual expression of quantity. You can see this in a sentence like: "he gave 100%, and then some!"
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Le Baron
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Re: Dutch phrasing question

Postby Le Baron » Sun May 30, 2021 1:52 pm

Something just popped into my head sort of related to this. In Dutch there's a common way of rendering e.g. 'about ten years' as: een jaar of tien. So a sentence like:

Toen ik een jaar of tien was, gingen wij op vakantie naar Denemarken = When I was about ten, we went on holiday to Denmark/We went on holiday to Denmark when I was around ten years old.

(Note: time/manner/place, then inversion of subject-verb for this sense. Whereas in a slightly different sense, comparing it to e.g. a holiday to Spain aged 12, it would probably be: We gingen op vakantie naar Denemarken toen ik een jaar of tien was).

I used to find this a bit odd as giving the option of one year or ten or everything in-between! When it definitely means 'ten years or so'

I don't know if the same exists in German. I would have said something like: so etwa zehn Jahre or etwa zehn Jahre? But I lack fluency.

Any Dutch natives please offer commentary/correction.
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