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De kinderen krijgen allemaal een appel. The children will all get
an apple.
Ik heb die boeken allemaal gelezen. I have read all those books.
Jullie mogen allemaal mee. You can all come along.
Moet dat allemaal gewassen? Does all of that have to
be washed?
More formal equivalents of the first two sentences would use alle and al.
Examples:
Alle kinderen krijgen een appel. All the children will get an apple.
Ik heb al die boeken gelezen. I have read all those books.
Elk, ieder, iedereen
The pronouns elk and ieder can be used in combination with a countable
noun in the singular, and they can refer to both persons and things. Used as
an attributive adjective, they follow the rules for the adjective declination.
De schrijver signeert elk/ieder boek.
The writer signs each book.
Elke/Iedere student krijgt een gesigneerd boek.
Each student gets a signed book.
As you can see in the examples, as adjectives, elk and ieder are interchangeable.
When used independently (without ending), however, ieder
can only refer to people, not to things, while elk can refer to people and
things. Examples:
De kinderen kregen elk een speculaaspop.
The children each got a gingerbread man.
Alternative: De kinderen kregen ieder een speculaaspop.
De schrijver signeerde elk van de boeken.
The writer signed every one of the books.
De schrijver signeerde ieder van de boeken. – This would not be
correct.
The pronoun iedereen is used independently and only refers to persons.
In this function, it is the equivalent of alles, which refers only to things.
At the same time, iedereen is the more informal form of allen. However,
when iedereen is used in the subject position, the verb form is third
person singular.
Indefinite
pronouns
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