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This article describes thegrammar ofAfrikaans, a language spoken in South Africa and Namibia which originated from 17th centuryDutch.^{[citation needed]}

There is no distinction for example between theinfinitive and present forms of verbs, with the exception of these two verbs:

This phenomenon is somewhat akin to English verbs, since infinitives are mostly equivalent to verbs in the simple tense, except in English singular 3rd person forms, in which case an extra-s is added.

In addition, Afrikaans verbs do notconjugate differently depending on the subject. For example,

For most verbs, thepreterite (e.g.I watched) has been completely replaced by the perfect (e.g.I have watched), or in storytelling by the present tense (i.e. the use of ahistorical present, which is sometimes also employed in Dutch). The only common exceptions to this are themodal verbs (see the following table) and the verbwees "be" (preterite formwas).

The following four full verbs also have (rarely used) preterite forms:

Several verbs have irregular perfect forms which are used alongside regular forms, sometimes with different meanings:

The verbbaar (to bear, to give birth) has two past participles:gebaar andgebore. The former is used in theactive voice ("she has borne") and the latter in thepassive voice ("she was born"). This is akin to Dutch, in which the verbbaren has the past participlesgebaard andgeboren, with a similar distinction. Compare also the distinction between Englishborn andborne.

Modern Afrikaans also lacks apluperfect (e.g.I had watched). Instead, the pluperfect, like the preterite, is expressed using theperfect.

The perfect is constructed with theauxiliary verbhet +past participle, which—except for the verbhê (past participlegehad), separable verbs such asreghelp (past participlereggehelp) and verbs with beginnings such asver- andont- (verkoop,ontmoet are both infinitive andpast participle)—is formed regularly by adding theprefixge- to the verb's infinitive/present form. For example,

Ek breek –I break

Ek het dit gebreek –I broke it, I have broken it, I had broken it

An object is necessary in this case, otherwise it implies that thesubject (ek) is broken.

Thefuture tense is in turn indicated using the auxiliarysal +infinitive. For example,

Ek sal kom –I will come (orlit.I shall come)

Theconditional is indicated by the preterite formsou +infinitive. For example,

Ek sou kom –I would come (lit.I should come)

Like otherGermanic languages, Afrikaans also has an analyticpassive voice that is formed in the present tense by using the auxiliary verbword (to become) +past participle, and, in the past tense, by using the auxiliaryis +past participle. For example,

Dit word gemaak –It is being made

Dit is (Dis) gemaak –It is made, It was made, It has been made (so it already exists)

Formal written Afrikaans also admits the construction ofwas gemaak to indicate passive voice in the pluperfect, which in this case corresponds tohad been made. The meaning of the sentence can change based on which auxiliary verb is used (is/was), e.g.is gemaak implies that something has been made and is still in existence today, whereaswas gemaak implies that something had been made, but was destroyed or lost.

Thepresent participle is normally formed with the suffix-ende (kom/komende), but sometimes it is irregular (wees/synde,hê/hebbende,sterf/sterwende,bly/blywende), although this is considered archaic for function verbs. Sometimes there is a spelling change to the root which does not affect the pronunciation (maak/makende,weet/wetende)

The verbwees uniquely hassubjunctive forms, although they are seldom ever used in the present day:sy is the present subjunctive form, andware is the past subjunctive form.

Nouns in Afrikaans, as in modern Dutch, have no inflectional case system,^[1] and do not havegrammatical gender (unlike modern Dutch). However, there is a distinction between the singular and plural forms of nouns. The most common plural marker is the suffix-e, but several common nouns form their plural instead by adding a final-s. A number of common nouns have irregular plurals:

Nogrammatical case distinction exists for nouns, adjectives and articles.

Adjectives may, however, beinflected when they precede a noun. As a general rule, polysyllabic adjectives are normally inflected when used as attributive adjectives. Monosyllabic attributive adjectives may or may not be inflected, depending on the historical forms of the adjective. Inflected adjectives retain the ending-e and for some adjectives, word-final consonants that were lost in attributive uses are retained. For example, the finalt following an/x/ sound that deleted in predicative uses in likereg (cf.Dutchrecht), is retained when the adjective is inflected (regte). A similar phenomenon applies to theapocope oft after/s/. For example, the adjectivevas becomesvaste when inflected. Conversely, adjectives ending in-d (pronounced/t/) or-g (pronounced/x/) following a long vowel ordiphthong, lose the-d and-g when inflected. For example, look at the inflected form of:

In some exceptional cases, after the syncope of the intervocalic consonant, there is also an additional apocope of the inflection marker. For example,

oud (old) –ou (when it precedes a noun)

Broadly speaking, the same morphological changes that apply to inflected adjectives also apply in the formation of the plural of nouns. For example, the plural ofvraag (question) isvrae (questions).

Remnants of the case distinction remain in the pronoun system.^[1] For example,

No case distinction is made for the plural pronouns.There is often no distinction between object and possessive pronouns when used before nouns. For example,

my –my,me

ons –our (the alternative formonse is now considered archaic)

An exception to the previous rule is the 3rd person singular masculine or neuter, where Afrikaans clearly distinguishes betweenhom (him) andsy (his). Likewise, the neuter pronoundit (it, subject or object) is distinguished from the possessivesy (its), and the termhy can emphatically be used to describe inanimate objects in the same way as the feminine in English, such as in theRooibaard hot sauce brand's slogan"hy brand mooi rooi" ("He burns beautifully red"), referring to its product's intense spice. For 3rd person plural pronouns, whereashulle can also meantheir, a varianthul is frequently used to mean "their" so as to differentiate betweentheir andthey/them. Similarly,julle when meaningyour has a possessive variantjul.

Afrikaans has a strict word order, described in manySouth African textbooks using the so-called "STOMPI rule". The name of the rule indicates the order in which the parts of a sentence should appear.

Word order in Afrikaans follows broadly the same rules as inDutch: in main clauses, the finite verb appears in "second position" (V2 word order), while subordinate clauses (e.g.content clauses andrelative clauses) havesubject–object–verb order, with the verb at (or near) the end of the clause.

As inDutch andGerman, infinitives and past participles appear in final position in main clauses, split from the corresponding auxiliary verb. For example,

Afrikaans: Hy het 'n huis gekoop.

Dutch: Hij heeft een huis gekocht.

English: He (has) bought a house.

Relative clauses usually begin with the pronoun "wat", used both for personal and non-personal antecedents. For example,

Afrikaans: Die man wat hier gebly het was ʼn Amerikaner.

Dutch: De man die hier bleef was een Amerikaan.

English: The man who stayed here was an American.

Alternatively, a relative clause may begin with a preposition + "wie" when referring to a personal antecedent, or an agglutination between "waar" and a preposition when referring to a non-personal antecedent.

A particular feature of Afrikaans is its use of thedouble negative. For example,

Afrikaans: Hy kan nie Afrikaans praat nie. (lit. He can not Afrikaans speak not.)

Dutch: Hij kan geen Afrikaans spreken.

English: He cannot speak Afrikaans.

Both French and San origins have been suggested for double negation in Afrikaans. While double negation is still found in Low Franconian dialects in West-Flanders and in some "isolated" villages in the centre of the Netherlands (i.e. Garderen), it takes a different form, which is not found in Afrikaans. The following is an example:

^*Compare with "Ek wil nie dit doen nie", which changes the meaning to "I do not want to do this specific thing." Whereas "Ek wil dit nie doen nie" emphasises the unwillingness to act, "Ek wil nie dit doen nie" emphasises the unwillingness to do the specified action.

The double negative construction has been fully integrated into standard Afrikaans and its proper use follows a set of fairly complex rules as the examples below show:

The wordhet in Dutch does not correspond tohet in Afrikaans. Thehet in Dutch meansit in English. The Dutch word that corresponds tohet in Afrikaans (in these cases) isheb.

Note that in these cases, most Dutch speakers would say instead:

A notable exception to this is the use of the negating grammar form that coincides with negating the English present participle. In this case there is only a single negation.

Certain words in Afrikaans arise due to grammar. For example,moet nie, which literally means "must not", usually becomesmoenie; although one does not have to write or say it like this, virtually all Afrikaans speakers will change the two words tomoenie in the same way asdo not shifts todon't in English.

• His genitive

• de Stadler, Leon G. (1996). "The indirect object in Afrikaans". In van Belle, William; Langendonck, Willy (eds.).The Dative. Vol. 1. pp. 251–288.
• Donaldson, Bruce C. (1993).A Grammar of Afrikaans. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
• Donaldson, Bruce C. (2000).Colloquial Afrikaans. London/New York: Routledge.
• de Villiers, Meyer (1951).Werkwoordsvorme in Afrikaans in die verlede tyd. Stellenbosch: Universiteit van Stellenbosch. See alsoRoy F. Fallis, Jr.; De Villiers (1954). "Review of de Villiers (1951)".Language.30 (4):544–549.doi:10.2307/410487.JSTOR 410487.

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