Learn Dutch: Moet de afspraak helaas afbellen. - Unfortunately have to cancel the appointment.

In casual spoken Dutch, text messages, or quick emails, you can drop the subject if it occupies the very first position and the context makes it obvious. Here, the pronoun Ik was dropped. The full grammatical sentence is Ik moet de afspraak helaas afbellen. This conversational shortcut is known as topic drop.

If I want to emphasize helaas by putting it first, can I still drop the subject?

No, you cannot. Topic drop only works when the dropped word would have been in the very first position. If you start with Helaas, the verb comes second, and the subject is forced into the third position due to inversion. You would have to include it and say Helaas moet ik de afspraak afbellen.

Could the missing word at the start of this sentence be an object instead of the subject?

In this specific sentence, no, because the object is already explicitly stated: de afspraak. However, you can drop objects in other sentences! If someone asked if you were going to the dentist, you could reply Moet ik helaas afbellen, where the dropped first word is the object Dat ('That, I unfortunately have to cancel').

Can I use afbellen to cancel anything, like a hotel reservation or a gym subscription?