Questions & Answers about Toen wij aankwamen, was de plant dood.
Why is aankwamen at the very end of the first part of the sentence?
Because the clause starts with toen (when). Toen is a subordinating conjunction, which means it forces the conjugated verb in its clause to move all the way to the end.
Aankomen is a separable verb (aan + komen). Why isn't it split up into kwamen ... aan here?
When a separable verb is pushed to the end of a subordinate clause (like this one starting with toen), its two parts stay together and are written as a single word: aankwamen.
Why does the second half say was de plant instead of de plant was?
This is because of the Dutch 'verb second' rule. The entire first clause (Toen wij aankwamen) counts as the first position of the main sentence. To keep the main verb in the second position, the verb (was) must come right after the comma, placing it before the subject (de plant).
Could I use wanneer instead of toen to mean 'when' in this sentence?
No. In Dutch, toen is strictly used for a single, specific event in the past (When we arrived that one time). You use wanneer for questions (When are we going?) or for repeated, habitual events (Whenever we arrived...).
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