iemand, niemand, iets, niets, men: Dutch indefinite pronouns

Indefinite pronouns stand in for a person or thing you cannot or do not want to name: Er staat iemand voor de deur. (There is someone at the door.) Ik heb niets gehoord. (I heard nothing.) This page covers the everyday set — iemand, niemand, iets, niets — and the ways Dutch says a general one or people: men, and in speech je and ze.

Use iemand / niemand for people and iets / niets for things; each pair is one positive word and one negative word. Dutch makes no separate word for anyone / anything — iemand and iets cover both.

They behave like ordinary nouns in the sentence — subject or object: Is er iemand thuis? (Is anyone home?) Ik ken hier niemand. (I don't know anyone here.) Wil je iets drinken? (Do you want something to drink?) Er is niets aan de hand. (Nothing is wrong.)

When an adjective follows iets or niets, the adjective gets an extra -s: iets leuks (something nice), niets nieuws (nothing new).

• Ik wil iets lekkers eten. (I want to eat something tasty.)
• Ze zei iets grappigs. (She said something funny.)
• Er is niets bijzonders gebeurd. (Nothing special happened.)
• Heb je iets moois gekocht? (Did you buy something beautiful?)

This adjective never takes the usual -e ending here — the -s replaces it. It is one of the fixed cases where a Dutch adjective stays uninflected; see when an adjective takes no -e.

To talk about people in general — English one, you, they — Dutch uses men in formal writing and je or ze in everyday speech. Men behaves like any singular subject under normal word order: the finite verb keeps second position, so men comes before the verb (Men mag hier niet roken) or after it when something else is fronted (In Nederland eet men vaak brood).

• Men mag hier niet roken. (Smoking is not allowed here — literally: one may not smoke here.) Formal, typical of signs and official notices.
• In Nederland eet men vaak brood als lunch. (In the Netherlands people often eat bread for lunch.)
• Je weet maar nooit. (You never know.) Generic je, the normal spoken choice.
• Ze zeggen dat het gaat regenen. (They say it is going to rain.) Generic ze for an unnamed group.

Men lacks a possessive form of its own, so where English would say one's, Dutch reaches for zijn (his): Men doet zijn best om Nederlands te leren. (One does one's best to learn Dutch.)

Niemand and niets are already negative, so you do not add a second negative word. English can double up in dialect ("I don't know nobody"), but standard Dutch cannot: say Ik ken niemand (I don't know anyone), never ik ken niet niemand. The same goes for niets: Ik heb niets gezien (I saw nothing), not ik heb niet niets gezien. If the sentence already has niemand, niets, nooit or nergens, leave niet and geen out.