Yes. Was is the past tense of wees (to be) and it corresponds to English was/were.
In this sentence:
Afrikaans does not change the form here for singular/plural in the same way English does:
So was is very common and very useful.
Destyds means something like:
It adds a sense of then, in that earlier period.
So:
It is a time adverb.
Yes, adverbs like destyds can sometimes move, but the version you have is very natural.
Current sentence:
This has the basic structure:
You may also see:
That version emphasizes destyds a bit more because it comes first. In Afrikaans main clauses, when something other than the subject comes first, the finite verb still stays in the second position:
In this sentence, klein comes after the verb was, so it is a predicative adjective. Predicative adjectives in Afrikaans normally stay in their basic form.
Compare that with an adjective placed before a noun, where Afrikaans often adds -e:
So here klein does not need an ending because it is not directly before dorp.
You might be understood, but it sounds less natural than Die dorp was destyds klein.
Afrikaans usually places adverbs like destyds before the final adjective in a sentence like this. So the most natural choices are:
The version with destyds at the very end is possible in some contexts, but it is not the best default choice for learners.
It is a normal word, but it can sound a little more literary or thoughtful than simply saying toe (then) in some contexts.
Compare:
So destyds is not wrong or strange at all—it just has a slightly more marked sense of in those days / at that earlier time.
A rough pronunciation guide is:
A rough full approximation:
Pronunciation varies by region and speaker, so this is only an English-friendly approximation.
In a sentence like this, die means the.
Afrikaans also has other uses of die in different contexts, for example as a relative pronoun in some structures, but for a beginner reading Die dorp was destyds klein, the safest interpretation is simply:
So you should read die dorp as the town / the village.
Here are the words and their basic forms:
This can help you recognize the same words in other sentences, especially was, since its dictionary form is wees rather than was.