Word
Het speelgoed was kapot, want de jongens waren stout.
Meaning
The toys were broken, because the boys were naughty.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of Het speelgoed was kapot, want de jongens waren stout.
zijn
to be
de jongen
the boy
want
because
kapot
broken
Questions & Answers about Het speelgoed was kapot, want de jongens waren stout.
Why does the sentence use was for "The toys were"? Shouldn't plural toys take waren?
In English, "toys" is plural, but the Dutch word speelgoed is a singular, uncountable noun (similar to "furniture" or "luggage" in English). Because speelgoed is grammatically singular, we must use the singular past tense was.
Why do we use waren in the second half of the sentence?
Waren is the plural past tense of zijn (to be). We use it here because the subject of this part of the sentence is de jongens (the boys), which is plural.
Doesn't the Dutch word for "because" usually push the verb to the end of the sentence?
You are thinking of omdat! Both want and omdat mean "because", but they affect word order differently. Want simply links two normal sentences together without changing the order. If we used omdat, the verb would indeed move to the end: ...omdat de jongens stout waren.
Is kapot only used for broken objects?
Kapot means "broken" and is used for things that are physically broken or out of order, like these toys. However, you can also use it figuratively to say you are completely exhausted, as in Ik ben kapot (I am dead tired).