A language learners’ forum

"Wanneer zal je een goede baan hebben?"
When will you have a good job?

Hoeveel geld zal je verdienen wanneer je een goede baan zal hebben?"
How much money will you make when you have a good job?

1. Are the two Dutch sentences correct?

2. Specifically, is the word order different for these two ways of using "wanneer"?

3. In the second sentence, would "als" be better than "wanneer", but is "wanneer" also OK?

"Een groep van twintig à dertig man kwam het perron oplopen"
A group of twenty to thirty men walked onto the platform.

Two questions:

1. Is "à" normally used in such a sentence, or would "tot" be more common?

2. Why is it "man" and not "mannen"?

Source:
De Telegraaf article

Tot has a different meaning. If you say à, then you're indicating uncertainty or approximation ("about 20-30 people"). Tot means "to", it would mean something like "it can fit between 20 and 30 people". It's used but in a different context.

Man is used because for groups of people when we want to approximate, we say man. Mannen is only the plural of man if it means "men" in English. Here 20 à 30 man means that the group is about 20-30 people big, but we don't know exactly whether it's 22 or 29 and we don't care.

Generally, if you want to indicate the quantity of people in a (relatively) small group, you say man after the number.

Er kunnen 700 man in de concertzaal. Deze tafel is bedoeld voor zes man.

"Daaruit worden 150 jarige jobben geloot die een verjaardagsvorkje kunnen prikken met koning Willem-Alexander ..."
From this will 150 birthday ?workers?, ?people who celebrate? drawn who can have a birthday meal with King Willem-Alexander ...

I'm very unsure what "jarige jobben" means. The context is that there are online applications and 150 winners will be drawn to have a meal with the King who himself will be celebrating his 50th. I see that "jarige jobben" is quite common but I can't find the real meaning.

Article in DeTelegraaf.nl

"Je zou denken dat het met zo’n nauwkeurige tijdsbepaling wel snor zit met de tijd."
You would think, with such accurate time determination, that all is good with the time.

Apparently "wel snor zit" is a very old Dutch expression. But I can't imaging what moustache has to do with it.

"Hoeveel mensen kan de wereld aan?"
How many people can the world accommodate?
How many people can the world manage?

The separable verb "aankunnen" means "to manage". I don't recall seeing this verb used before, although it could easily pass unnoticed.

My questions are:

1. Is this particular sentence something that a person would say in normal conversation, or would it be seen mostly in written work?

2. In normal Dutch conversation, does it ever sound awkward if the prefix of a separable verb ends up at the end of a very long sentence?

3. Do Dutch speakers sometimes have difficulty getting the separable verbs right (there are so many)?

Separable verbs are a challenge for me, especially in conversation.

"Lichtversterking door gestimuleerde emissive van straling"
"Lichtversterking door gestimuleerde emissie van straling"
"lichtversterking door gestimuleerde uitzending van straling"

These are translations of LASER (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). Since the Dutch translation doesn't match the letters LASER, there maybe isn't a necessity to have a single translation. So I see different ones.

"Lichtversterking door gestimuleerde emissie van straling" can be found here:
http://home.physics.leidenuniv.nl/~eliel/teaching/fmt/laser.pdf
and here:
http://www.nil.nl/bundellassen/

"Lichtversterking door gestimuleerde uitzending van straling" can be found here:
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_(licht)
and here:
http://www.engineering-online.nl/?com=content&action=laser

"Lichtversterking door gestimuleerde emissive van straling" can be found here:
http://www.sciencespace.nl/het-allerkleinste/artikelen/4000/werking-van-de-laser
and here:
https://www.scientias.nl/hoe-zwaar-is-licht/

This last one, using "emissive" seems a bit awkward. Is "emissive" really OK here?

"Sommige mensen blijven op de zwarte lijst."
"Sommige mensen blijven op de zwarte lijst staan."
Some people remain on the blacklist.

Are both sentences correct? Why would one be used instead of the other? What would most Dutch speakers/writers use?

1. Is this particular sentence something that a person would say in normal conversation, or would it be seen mostly in written work?

2. In normal Dutch conversation, does it ever sound awkward if the prefix of a separable verb ends up at the end of a very long sentence?

3. Do Dutch speakers sometimes have difficulty getting the separable verbs right (there are so many)?

Separable verbs are a challenge for me, especially in conversation.

Normal conversation, not really, and no, we're used to it - we recognise separable verbs by the stress being on the prefix.

Snor zitten is just an idiom - no one knows what moustaches have to do with anything.

Most Dutch people don't care about the acronym behind lasers and would call them lasers. Emissie is the proper word, uitzending is a possible alternative but seems clumsy to me. I don't think laser really needs a translation given that any good Dutch scientist speaks enough English that a translation of the acronym is completely and entirely redundant - and laser is a very normal word in Dutch anyway.

Both sentences you mentioned are correct. Staan is just a more visual way of saying the same thing (as it refers to the words standing on paper)

"Een suikeroplossing is zoet. Hij vond een oplossing voor het probleem."
A sugar solution is sweet. He found a solution to the problem.

It is interesting that "oplossing" and "solution" are used in both languages for what appears to be rather unrelated meanings. Perhaps you could make the connection by thinking that a problem that is solved dissolves into a solution. Quite a big stretch.

Here are some Google Translate versions in other languages. I don't know if they are correct.

Spanish: Una solución de azúcar es dulce. Encontró una solución al problema.
French: Une solution de sucre est douce. Il a trouvé une solution au problème.
German: Eine Zuckerlösung ist süß. Er fand eine Lösung für das Problem.
Esperanto: A sukero solvo estas dolĉa. Li trovis solvon al la problemo.
Latin: A solutio est dulcis sugar. Invenit problema.

I wonder if these two rather disconnected meanings of "solution" are the same word in other languages too?