Breakdown of Dat was veruit het allerlaatste wereldrecord dat het team kon breken.
zijn
to be
kunnen
can
het team
the team
breken
to break
Questions & Answers about Dat was veruit het allerlaatste wereldrecord dat het team kon breken.
Can you use veruit and the prefix aller- at the same time like in veruit het allerlaatste? Doesn't that mean the same thing twice?
Yes, you can combine them! While both amplify the superlative, they do it slightly differently. Veruit means "by far," comparing it to other options, while aller- means "of all" or "the very." Together, they create a highly emphasized superlative: "by far the very last." It is perfectly natural in Dutch when you want maximum emphasis.
Why do we use the relative pronoun dat in dat het team kon breken instead of die?
The relative pronoun must match the gender of the noun it refers back to. Here, it refers to wereldrecord. Since record is a neuter noun (an het word), the compound noun wereldrecord is also an het word. Therefore, you must use the relative pronoun dat. If it had been a de word, you would use die.
I learned that aller- is added to superlatives. Since laatste just means "last," is it really a superlative?
Grammatically, laatste functions like a superlative here (from laat -> later -> laatst). Dutch frequently adds aller- to words indicating extreme positions in time or sequences, like allereerste (the very first) and allerlaatste (the very last). This emphasizes that there is absolutely nothing coming after it.