Learn Dutch: Hadden jullie vroeger veel poppen? - Did you all have a lot of dolls in the past?

Hadden jullie vroeger veel poppen?

Did you all have a lot of dolls in the past?

Breakdown of Hadden jullie vroeger veel poppen?

much / many / a lot of

vroeger

in the past

Questions & Answers about Hadden jullie vroeger veel poppen?

Why do we use hadden here instead of had?

hadden is the plural past tense of hebben (to have). Because the subject is jullie (plural "you" or "you all"), we must use the plural form. If the subject was singular, like jij or hij, you would use had.

The translation says "in the past". Can vroeger also translate to "used to"?

Exactly! Dutch doesn't have a direct verb translation for the English "used to". Instead, you use the past tense of a verb and add the adverb vroeger (which literally means "earlier" or "in the past"). Asking Hadden jullie vroeger... is the most natural way to ask "Did you use to have..." in Dutch.

Does veel mean "much" or "many" here?

It means both! In Dutch, veel is used for both countable things (like veel poppen / many dolls) and uncountable things (like veel tijd / much time). You don't have to learn two different words for this like you do in English.

Why does the word for dolls (poppen) have a double 'p'?

The singular word for doll is pop, which has a short 'o' sound. When we add -en to make it plural, we have to double the 'p' to lock in that short 'o' sound. If we only wrote one 'p' (popen), the syllable would be "open" and the 'o' would be pronounced as a long vowel.