Adverbs

The adverb 'er'

The adverb 'er' has about 5 different usage forms.

At the beginning of a sentence if the subject is non-specific

In this usage 'er' is at the beginning of the sentence, and the verb and subject are reversed.

The effect of 'er' in this case, is that the subject becomes less specific.

You can't do this with every kind of sentence, as you can see on this page (in English).

An example:
3 mannen waren aan het praten (3 (specific) men were talking).
Er waren 3 mannen aan het praten (3 (some) men were talking).

From a book of Jip and Janneke:
Er komt storm (A (non-specific) storm is coming).
A more specific form would be: De storm komt (The storm is coming).

'Er' in the sense of 'of it' or 'of them'

In a book of Jip and Janneke we encountered the sentence Mag ik er nog een? (Can I have another one?)

This is after Jip gets a vitamin pill. Since it tastes nice, he wants another one.

In this case 'er' stands for 'ervan' (of them, of it). He means: can I get another one of those (pills).

Some other examples:
Mijn oom heeft veel auto's (My uncle has many cars) can be replaced by
Mijn oom heeft er veel (My uncle has a lot of them) (if, from the preceding text, you know we're talking about cars).

Or somebody could say to me:
Ik heb 10 boeken over de Chinese taal (I have 10 books about the Chinese language)
I could answer:
Ik heb er 50 (I have 50 of them).

Links

A funny word: 'er'

A number of pages about the meanings of 'er' (in English).