 | You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Afrikaans. (May 2022)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
This article describes the grammar of Afrikaans , a language spoken in South Africa and Namibia which originated from 17th century Dutch.[ citation needed ]
There is no distinction for example between the infinitive and present forms of verbs, with the exception of these two verbs:
| infinitive form | present indicative form | English |
|---|---|---|
| hê | het | have |
| wees | is | be |
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 not conjugate differently depending on the subject. For example,
| Afrikaans | Dutch | English |
|---|---|---|
| ek is | ik ben | I am |
| jy/u is | jij/u bent | you are (SG) |
| hy/sy/dit is | hij/zij/het is | he/she/it is |
| ons is | wij zijn | we are |
| julle is | jullie zijn | you are (PL) |
| hulle is | zij zijn | they are |
For most verbs, the preterite (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 a historical present, which is sometimes also employed in Dutch). The only common exceptions to this are the modal verbs (see the following table) and the verb wees "be" (preterite form was).
| present form | preterite form | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Afrikaans | Dutch (3SG) | English | Afrikaans | Dutch (3SG) | English |
| kan | kan | can | kon | kon | could |
| sal | zal | shall (will) | sou | zou | should (would) |
| moet | moet | mote (must) | moes | moest | must (had to) |
| mag | mag | may | mog (arch.) | mocht | might (was allowed to) |
| wil | wil | will (want to) | wou | wilde / wou | would (wanted to) |
The following four full verbs also have (rarely used) preterite forms:
| Afrikaans | Dutch (3SG) | English | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| present | preterite | present | preterite | |
| dink | dag / dog | denkt | dacht | think |
| het | had | heeft | had | have |
| weet | wis | weet | wist | know |
| word | werd | wordt | werd | become |
Several verbs have irregular perfect forms which are used alongside regular forms, sometimes with different meanings:
| Afrikaans | Dutch (3SG) | English | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| present | perfect | present | perfect | ||
| irregular | regular | ||||
| baar | gebore | gebaar | baart | gebaard / geboren | bear, give birth |
| dink | dag(arch.)/dog | gedink | denkt | gedacht | think |
| oorly | oorlede | oorly | overlijdt | overleden | die |
| sterf | gestorwe (arch.)/gesterwe | gesterf | sterft | gestorven | die |
| trou | getroud | getrou | trouwt | getrouwd | marry |
The verb baar (to bear, to give birth) has two past participles: gebaar and gebore. The former is used in the active voice ("she has borne") and the latter in the passive voice ("she was born"). This is akin to Dutch, in which the verb baren has the past participles gebaard and geboren, with a similar distinction. Compare also the distinction between English born and borne.
Modern Afrikaans also lacks a pluperfect (e.g. I had watched). Instead, the pluperfect, like the preterite, is expressed using the perfect.
The perfect is constructed with the auxiliary verb het + past participle, which—except for the verb hê (past participle gehad), separable verbs such as reghelp (past participle reggehelp) and verbs with beginnings such as ver- and ont- (verkoop, ontmoet are both infinitive and past participle)—is formed regularly by adding the prefix ge- to the verb's infinitive/present form. For example,
An object is necessary in this case, otherwise it implies that the subject (ek) is broken.
The future tense is in turn indicated using the auxiliary sal + infinitive. For example,
The conditional is indicated by the preterite form sou + infinitive. For example,
Like other Germanic languages, Afrikaans also has an analytic passive voice that is formed in the present tense by using the auxiliary verb word (to become) + past participle, and, in the past tense, by using the auxiliary is + past participle. For example,
Formal written Afrikaans also admits the construction of was gemaak to indicate passive voice in the pluperfect, which in this case corresponds to had 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, whereas was gemaak implies that something had been made, but was destroyed or lost.
The present 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 verb wees uniquely has subjunctive forms, although they are seldom ever used in the present day: sy is the present subjunctive form, and ware is the past subjunctive form.
Nouns in Afrikaans, as in modern Dutch, have no inflectional case system, [1] and do not have grammatical 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:
| English | Afrikaans | Dutch |
|---|---|---|
| child, children | kind, kinders | kind, kinderen |
| woman, women | vrou, vroue (vrouens) | vrouw, vrouwen |
| shirt, shirts | hemp, hemde | hemd, hemden |
No grammatical case distinction exists for nouns, adjectives and articles.
| Definite Article(s) | Indefinite Article | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gloss | Afrikaans | Dutch | Gloss | Afrikaans | Dutch |
| the | die | de/het | a(n) | ʼn | een/ʼn |
Adjectives may, however, be inflected 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 final t following an /x/ sound that deleted in predicative uses in like reg (cf. Dutch recht), is retained when the adjective is inflected (regte). A similar phenomenon applies to the apocope of t after /s/. For example, the adjective vas becomes vaste when inflected. Conversely, adjectives ending in -d (pronounced /t/) or -g (pronounced /x/) following a long vowel or diphthong, lose the -d and -g when inflected. For example, look at the inflected form of:
| Predicative | Gloss | Attributive | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| goed | good | goeie | |
| laag | low | lae | |
| hoog | high | hoë | (a diaeresis is used to mark a syllable break) |
In some exceptional cases, after the syncope of the intervocalic consonant, there is also an additional apocope of the inflection marker. For example,
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 of vraag (question) is vrae (questions).
Remnants of the case distinction remain in the pronoun system. [1] For example,
| Subject Pronouns | Object pronouns | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Afrikaans | Dutch | English | Afrikaans | Dutch | English |
| ek | ik | I | my | mij/me | me |
| jy/u | jij/u/gij [lower-alpha 1] | ye [lower-alpha 1] /you (SG) | jou/u | jou/u | you (SG) |
| hy/sy/dit | hij/zij/het | he/she/it | hom/haar/dit | hem/haar/het | him/her/it |
| ons | wij | we | ons | ons | us |
| julle | jullie/gij [lower-alpha 1] | you (PL) | julle | jullie | you (PL) |
| hulle | zij [lower-alpha 2] | they | hulle | hen | them |
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,
An exception to the previous rule is the 3rd person singular masculine or neuter, where Afrikaans clearly distinguishes between hom (him) and sy (his). Likewise, the neuter pronoun dit (it, subject or object) is distinguished from the possessive sy (its), and the term hy can emphatically be used to describe inanimate objects in the same way as the feminine in English, such as in the Rooibaard 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, whereas hulle can also mean their, a variant hul is frequently used to mean "their" so as to differentiate between their and they/them. Similarly, julle when meaning your has a possessive variant jul.
Afrikaans has a strict word order, described in many South African text books using the so-called "STOMPI rule". The name of the rule indicates the order in which the parts of a sentence should appear.
| S | v1 | T | O | M | P | v2 | I |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subject | First verb | Time | Object | Manner | Place | Second verb | Infinitive |
Word order in Afrikaans follows broadly the same rules as in Dutch: in main clauses, the finite verb appears in "second position" (V2 word order), while subordinate clauses (e.g. content clauses and relative clauses) have subject–object–verb order, with the verb at (or near) the end of the clause.
| Afrikaans | Dutch | English |
|---|---|---|
| Hy is siek. | Hij is ziek. | He is sick. |
| Ek weet dat hy siek is. | Ik weet dat hij ziek is. | I know that he is sick. |
As in Dutch and German, infinitives and past participles appear in final position in main clauses, split from the corresponding auxiliary verb. For example,
Relative clauses usually begin with the pronoun "wat", used both for personal and non-personal antecedents. For example,
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 the double negative. For example,
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:
| Afrikaans | Dutch | English |
|---|---|---|
| Ek wil dit nie doen nie. | Ik wil dit niet doen. | I do not want to do it. |
*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:
| Afrikaans | Dutch | English |
|---|---|---|
| Ek het nie geweet dat hy sou kom nie. | Ik heb niet geweten dat hij zou komen.1 | I did not know that he would be coming |
| Ek het geweet dat hy nie sou kom nie. | Ik heb geweten dat hij niet zou komen.² | I knew that he would not come. |
| Ek het nie geweet dat hy nie sou kom nie. | Ik heb niet geweten dat hij niet zou komen.³ | I did not know that he would not come. |
| Hy sal nie kom nie, want hy is siek. | Hij zal niet komen, want hij is ziek.4 | He will not be coming because he is sick. |
| Dis (Dit is) nie so moeilik om Afrikaans te leer nie. | Het is niet zo moeilijk om Afrikaans te leren. | It is not so difficult to learn Afrikaans. |
The word het in Dutch does not correspond to het in Afrikaans. The het in Dutch means it in English. The Dutch word that corresponds to het in Afrikaans (in these cases) is heb.
Note that in these cases, most Dutch speakers would say instead:
| No. | Dutch | English |
|---|---|---|
1 | Ik wist niet dat hij zou komen. | I knew not that he would come. |
2 | Ik wist dat hij niet zou komen. | I knew that he would not come. |
3 | Ik wist niet dat hij niet zou komen. | I knew not that he would not come. |
4 | Hij komt niet, want hij is ziek. (or more commonly Hij komt niet omdat hij ziek is.) | He does not come because he is sick. |
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.
| Afrikaans | English |
|---|---|
| Hy is in die hospitaal, maar hy eet nie. (lit. ...he eats not.) | He is in hospital, but he isn't eating. |
Certain words in Afrikaans arise due to grammar. For example, moet nie, which literally means "must not", usually becomes moenie; although one does not have to write or say it like this, virtually all Afrikaans speakers will change the two words to moenie in the same way as do not shifts to don't in English.
A verb is a word that in syntax generally conveys an action, an occurrence, or a state of being. In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected to encode tense, aspect, mood, and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object. Verbs have tenses: present, to indicate that an action is being carried out; past, to indicate that an action has been done; future, to indicate that an action will be done.
English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and whole texts.
The Finnish language is spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns elsewhere. Unlike the languages spoken in neighbouring countries, such as Swedish and Norwegian, which are North Germanic languages, or Russian, which is a Slavic language, Finnish is a Uralic language of the Finnic languages group. Typologically, Finnish is agglutinative. As in some other Uralic languages, Finnish has vowel harmony, and like other Finnic languages, it has consonant gradation.
French grammar is the set of rules by which the French language creates statements, questions and commands. In many respects, it is quite similar to that of the other Romance languages.
This article outlines the grammar of the Dutch language, which shares strong similarities with German grammar and also, to a lesser degree, with English grammar.
Verbs constitute one of the main parts of speech in the English language. Like other types of words in the language, English verbs are not heavily inflected. Most combinations of tense, aspect, mood and voice are expressed periphrastically, using constructions with auxiliary verbs.
In Portuguese grammar, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and articles are moderately inflected: there are two genders and two numbers. The case system of the ancestor language, Latin, has been lost, but personal pronouns are still declined with three main types of forms: subject, object of verb, and object of preposition. Most nouns and many adjectives can take diminutive or augmentative derivational suffixes, and most adjectives can take a so-called "superlative" derivational suffix. Adjectives usually follow their respective nouns.
Swedish is descended from Old Norse. Compared to its progenitor, Swedish grammar is much less characterized by inflection. Modern Swedish has two genders and no longer conjugates verbs based on person or number. Its nouns have lost the morphological distinction between nominative and accusative cases that denoted grammatical subject and object in Old Norse in favor of marking by word order. Swedish uses some inflection with nouns, adjectives, and verbs. It is generally a subject–verb–object (SVO) language with V2 word order.
Bengali grammar is the study of the morphology and syntax of Bengali, an Indo-European language spoken in the Indian subcontinent. Given that Bengali has two forms, Bengali: চলিত ভাষা and Bengali: সাধু ভাষা, it is important to note that the grammar discussed below applies fully only to the Bengali: চলিত (cholito) form. Shadhu bhasha is generally considered outdated and no longer used either in writing or in normal conversation. Although Bengali is typically written in the Bengali script, a romanization scheme is also used here to suggest the pronunciation.
Yiddish grammar is the system of principles which govern the structure of the Yiddish language. This article describes the standard form laid out by YIVO while noting differences in significant dialects such as that of many contemporary Hasidim. As a Germanic language descended from Middle High German, Yiddish grammar is fairly similar to that of German, though it also has numerous linguistic innovations as well as grammatical features influenced by or borrowed from Hebrew, Aramaic, and various Slavic languages.
The grammar of the Polish language is complex and characterized by a high degree of inflection, and has relatively free word order, although the dominant arrangement is subject–verb–object (SVO). There commonly are no articles, and there is frequent dropping of subject pronouns. Distinctive features include the different treatment of masculine personal nouns in the plural, and the complex grammar of numerals and quantifiers.
The future perfect is a verb form or construction used to describe an event that is expected or planned to happen before a time of reference in the future, such as will have finished in the English sentence "I will have finished by tomorrow." It is a grammatical combination of the future tense, or other marking of future time, and the perfect, a grammatical aspect that views an event as prior and completed.
The grammar of Modern Greek, as spoken in present-day Greece and Cyprus, is essentially that of Demotic Greek, but it has also assimilated certain elements of Katharevousa, the archaic, learned variety of Greek imitating Classical Greek forms, which used to be the official language of Greece through much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Modern Greek grammar has preserved many features of Ancient Greek, but has also undergone changes in a similar direction as many other modern Indo-European languages, from more synthetic to more analytic structures.
Breton is a Brittonic Celtic language in the Indo-European family, and its grammar has many traits in common with these languages. Like most Indo-European languages it has grammatical gender, grammatical number, articles and inflections and, like the other Celtic languages, Breton has mutations. In addition to the singular–plural system, it also has a singulative–collective system, similar to Welsh. Unlike the other Brittonic languages, Breton has both a definite and indefinite article, whereas Welsh and Cornish lack an indefinite article and unlike the other extant Celtic languages, Breton has been influenced by French.
Standard Kannada grammar is primarily based on Keshiraja's Shabdamanidarpana which provides the fullest systematic exposition of Kannada language. The earlier grammatical works include portions of Kavirajamarga of 9th century, Kavyavalokana and Karnatakabhashabhushana both authored by Nagavarma II in first half of the 12th century.
In linguistic morphology, inflection is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and definiteness. The inflection of verbs is called conjugation, and one can refer to the inflection of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, determiners, participles, prepositions and postpositions, numerals, articles, etc., as declension.
Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia; it is a separate standard language rather than a national variety, unlike Netherlands Dutch, Belgian Dutch and Surinamese Dutch. An estimated 90 to 95% of Afrikaans vocabulary is ultimately of Dutch origin, so there are few lexical differences between the two languages, however Afrikaans has considerably more regular morphology, grammar, and spelling.
This article deals with the grammar of the Udmurt language.
This article deals with the grammar of the Komi language of the northeastern European part of Russia
The grammar of Old Saxon is highly inflected, similar to that of Old English or Latin. As an ancient Germanic language, the morphological system of Old Saxon is similar to that of the hypothetical Proto-Germanic reconstruction, retaining many of the inflections thought to have been common in Proto-Indo-European and also including characteristically Germanic constructions such as the umlaut. Among living languages, Old Saxon morphology most closely resembles that of modern High German.