Breakdown of Wanneer velen bijeenkomen, lopen sommigen blindelings met anderen mee.
veel
much / many / a lot of
met
with
wanneer
when
ander
other
sommige
some
bijeenkomen
to gather (to come together)
meelopen
to follow the crowd
blindelings
blindly
Questions & Answers about Wanneer velen bijeenkomen, lopen sommigen blindelings met anderen mee.
Why do vele, sommige, and andere all end in -n in this sentence (velen, sommigen, anderen)?
In Dutch, when words like veel, sommig, or ander are used independently (meaning there is no noun written directly after them) AND they refer specifically to people, they get an -n ending. If they referred to things, concepts, or animals, they would just end in -e (e.g., vele, sommige). Since this sentence refers to groups of people, they all take the -n.
Why is bijeenkomen written as a single word here?
bijeenkomen (to gather / come together) is a separable verb. Normally it splits in a main clause (for example, zij komen bijeen). However, because it is in a subordinate clause introduced by Wanneer (when), the verb is pushed to the end of the clause. When a separable verb is placed at the end of a sentence like this, its parts reattach into a single word.
Why does the second half of the sentence start with lopen sommigen instead of sommigen lopen?
This is due to the V2 (verb-second) rule. The entire first clause (Wanneer velen bijeenkomen) acts as the first grammatical building block of the sentence. To keep the main verb in the second position, lopen must come immediately after the comma, causing the subject (sommigen) to swap places and come after the verb.
The English translation says "follow others", but doesn't lopen mean "to walk"?
Literally, yes! However, the complete verb here is the separable verb meelopen (to walk along). The phrase meelopen met anderen literally means "to walk along with others," but in Dutch it is widely used figuratively to mean following the crowd, conforming, or doing what everyone else is doing.
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