Breakdown of Het team zei dat ze hadden beslist, nadat de directeur hen had overtuigd.
hebben
to have
zeggen
to say
hen
them (object)
het team
the team
ze
they; she (unstressed form of zij) / them (object)
dat
that (conjunction)
nadat
after
de directeur
the director (of a company or school)
overtuigen
to convince
beslissen
to decide
Questions & Answers about Het team zei dat ze hadden beslist, nadat de directeur hen had overtuigd.
Why do we use the past perfect (hadden beslist) here instead of the present perfect (hebben beslist)?
Because this is reported speech introduced by a past tense verb (zei). When you report what someone said in the past, their original words (which were likely 'we hebben beslist' - present perfect) shift one step further back in time to the past perfect (hadden beslist).
I learned that the past participle of 'to decide' is besloten. Why is it beslist in this sentence?
Dutch has two common verbs for 'to decide': besluiten (which is irregular: besloot, besloten) and beslissen (which is regular: besliste, beslist). They are mostly interchangeable, so hadden besloten would also be perfectly fine here!
Both dat and nadat push the verbs to the end of their clauses. In what order should those verbs go?
In subordinate clauses with compound tenses (like the past perfect), you usually have a choice! You can put the auxiliary verb first (hadden beslist) or the past participle first (beslist hadden). Both are completely correct and natural. The same applies to had overtuigd versus overtuigd had.
Why is hen used for 'them' instead of hun?
Hen is the correct form for a direct object, answering the question 'who did the director convince?'. Hun is strictly used for indirect objects (like 'to them' or 'for them'). You could also use the unstressed pronoun ze here, but hen is a bit more formal.
Het team takes a singular verb (zei). Why does the next clause use the plural pronoun ze (they)?
Het team is grammatically singular, but it represents a group of people (a collective noun). Once the group is introduced, it is very common to switch to a plural pronoun (ze) to refer to the individual members of that group, just like we often do in English.
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