Breakdown of Moeten we snel even prikken.
snel
fast
moeten
to have to, must
we
we (unstressed form of wij)
even
just, for a moment (particle)
Questions & Answers about Moeten we snel even prikken.
Why does this statement start with the verb Moeten?
In casual spoken Dutch, you can drop an unstressed pronoun from the very beginning of a sentence if the context makes it obvious. The full sentence is Dat moeten we snel even prikken. Because the object Dat (that) was in the first position, it triggered inversion between the subject (we) and the verb (moeten). When you drop Dat, the inverted order (Moeten we) remains, leaving the verb in the first position.
Since it starts with a verb, couldn't this also be a yes/no question?
Grammatically, yes. Moeten we snel even prikken? ("Should we schedule that quickly?") looks exactly the same written down. In spoken Dutch, you can easily tell them apart by intonation: a question's pitch rises at the end, while this dropped-topic statement has a falling pitch to show it is a declarative statement.
Doesn't prikken literally mean "to prick"?
Yes, but in conversational Dutch it is widely used as a shorthand for the idiom een datum prikken (to pick or schedule a date—think of putting a pin in a calendar). If someone says Laten we even prikken, they simply mean "Let's schedule a time to meet."
What is the effect of using snel even together?
Both words work to soften the sentence and make it sound less like a strict demand. Even is a modal particle that makes an action feel casual, temporary, or low-effort, while snel (fast/quick) emphasizes that finding a date won't be a huge task. Together, they make the suggestion feel breezy and informal, translating roughly to doing something "real quick."