Boodschappen doen in het Nederlands: vragen en antwoorden
A1 Dutch luyện nghe · Tiếng Hà Lan · Phù hợp với người mới bắt đầu
What does “boodschappen” mean in Dutch?
In Dutch, boodschappen doen means to do the shopping. The word boodschappen (plural of boodschap) originally meant errands or messages — you were sent somewhere to carry something out. Over time, the things you came back with — the groceries — took over the word. So “doing your boodschappen” still carries that old idea of going out on an errand, just one that ends at the supermarket.
The spoken question here — “Bij welke supermarkt doet u de boodschappen?” (At which supermarket do you do the shopping?) — is textbook natural use. Boodschap goes back to Middle Dutch bodescap, from bode (messenger) + -schap (a suffix forming nouns). German keeps the original meaning clearly in Botschaft (embassy, lit. “the mission or message”). In modern Dutch, the singular boodschap still means a piece of news or a message in formal contexts: een slechte boodschap (bad news), een boodschap achterlaten (to leave a message). The plural boodschappen almost always means groceries. Other useful phrases: een boodschappenlijstje (a shopping list, with the diminutive -je), boodschappentas (shopping bag), de boodschappen ophalen (to pick up the groceries).