Breakdown of Ze wil meer tijd met haar familie doorbrengen.
zij
she
met
with
willen
to want
de familie
the family
meer
more
de tijd
the time
haar
her
doorbrengen
to spend
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Questions & Answers about Ze wil meer tijd met haar familie doorbrengen.
Why does the verb doorbrengen appear at the end of the sentence instead of right after wil?
Dutch main clauses follow the V2 rule: the finite verb (wil) takes the second position, and any infinitives (including separable verbs like doorbrengen) move to the clause end. When you have a modal verb (here wil) plus another verb, that second verb (the infinitive) always goes to the very end.
What does doorbrengen mean, and why is it written as one word?
Doorbrengen literally means to spend (time). It’s a separable verb made from the prefix door and the verb brengen. In infinitive form it’s written as one word. When conjugated without a modal, you separate it: e.g. “Ik breng tijd door.”
Why is the possessive haar required before familie? Could we just say “met familie”?
In Dutch you normally mark whose family it is with a possessive pronoun. Met familie without a determiner sounds incomplete. You’d say met je familie, met onze familie, or met haar familie to specify whose family you mean.
Why is the subject pronoun Ze and not Zij?
Ze is the unstressed subject form used in most neutral sentences. Zij is the stressed form, used for emphasis or contrast (e.g. “Zij wil wél meer tijd”). In everyday speech and writing, ze is far more common.
How does meer work here? Why is it meer tijd and not tijd meer?
Meer is an adjective meaning more and in Dutch adjectives normally precede the noun they modify. So meer tijd = more time. You cannot place the adjective after the noun in Dutch.
Can I swap the order of meer tijd and met haar familie? For example, “Ze wil met haar familie meer tijd doorbrengen.”
Yes. Both “Ze wil meer tijd met haar familie doorbrengen” and “Ze wil met haar familie meer tijd doorbrengen” are correct. The second puts a bit more emphasis on with her family, but the overall meaning stays the same.
Why is the preposition met used before haar familie and not something like bij or aan?
The collocation for spending time is tijd met iemand doorbrengen—you always use met to indicate the people you spend time with. Using bij (at someone’s place) or aan (to someone) would break that fixed pattern and sound unnatural.
Why is there no te before doorbrengen (e.g. te doorbrengen)?
After modal verbs like wil, Dutch drops the te before the infinitive. You simply use the bare infinitive (here doorbrengen) immediately after the clause-final position.