a sign of life
[phrase]
[een te-ken van le-ven]

Hallo allemaal!

I thought I would give you a small sign of life before everybody thinks I decided to quit the DWOTD 🙂 My goal is still to produce 3 posts a week, however the last few months have been completely dominated by major changes in my private life. All positive changes by the way, I started my own business and bought my own place. The latter is being renovated as we speak, and boy it takes a lot of time. And I’m not doing any of the renovation myself, ‘kun je nagaan!’ (‘go figure / imagine that!’).

I’m moving house in a couple of weeks 🙂 I’ll keep the blog alive but it will be a while before I’m able to post more often. And while I’m writing this anyway, I’ll throw in a few example sentences.

Tot snel!

Examples:
– “Lieve schat, we hebben al een tijdje niets van je gehoord. Zou je alsjeblieft een teken van leven willen geven? Veel liefs, mamma.”
(“Darling, we haven’t heard from you for a while. Will you please give us a sign of life? (Lots of) love, mom.” Some people write ‘mama’. It is however always pronounced ‘mamma’.)

– “Het is nu een week geleden dat de overstroming heeft plaatsgevonden en er zijn in het dorp geen tekenen van leven meer waargenomen.”
(“It’s been a week since the flood took place and no signs of life have been detected/recorded anymore in the village.”)

– “Heeft Martijn uiteindelijk nog gereageerd op de e-mail?” – “Nee, geen enkel teken van leven! Dat is niets voor hem, zou er wat aan de hand zijn?”
(“Did Martijn respond to the email after all?” – “No, no sign of life at all! That’s not like him, I wonder if something is wrong.”)

– “Eindelijk een teken van leven van Sarah! Wat een opluchting, we begonnen ons ernstig zorgen te maken!”
(“Finally a sign of life from Sarah! What a relieve, we started to get really worried!” Literally ‘(zich) zorgen maken’ is ‘to make worries’.)

Related words:
– Teken: sign [noun] [het teken, de tekenen/tekens]. ‘Tekenen’ is the plural form for ‘teken’ in the meaning of ‘symptom, phenomenon, evidence’. ‘Tekens’ is the plural form in case of symbols.
– Leven: life [noun] [het leven, de levens].

Example:
– “Hoeveel levens heb je nog?” – “Dit is mijn laatste dus het is bijna ‘game over’.”
(“How many lives do you have left?” – “This is my last so it’s almost ‘game over’!”)

– Bericht: message, notice [noun] [het bericht, de berichten].
– Stil: quiet [adjective].
– Bezorgd: worried [adjective].