English Translation
Twice a week the gardener would come to mow the grass, so I could never lie and read in the long grass.
shouldn’t this be daardoor Daarom / daardoor - Taaladvies.net?
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The article explains it pretty nicely.
Daarom is about a reason (“reden”) while daardoor is about a cause (“oorzaak”).
The difference is not so obvious here, because the second part is negative.
To make it easier to see, let me rephrase:
As a reason:
I can’t lie in the long grass to read. Why? Because the grass is always short, because it gets mown twice a week. That’s why. (= that’s the reason)
Now as a cause:
The fact that the grass is always too short causes me not to be able to lie in the long grass.
This doesn’t really make sense. The grass being short doesn’t actually cause anything. And can you really cause something not to happen? A cause directly kicks off further events. Not being able to do something is not an event. It can however prevent something from happening, and it’s therefore the reason something does not happen.
Interestingly, daarom and daardoor directly correspond to German darum and dadurch, which are used the same way. I would definitely use darum over dadurch here.
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