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Categories, Word Types, and Concepts

Why?

Say you are helping a doctor during an operation -- you are passing on the tools, but you did not know then name of any tools. Everything was just a "thing" to you. Your experience would be miserable. However, if you knew the name of every tool, you would suddenly become very useful.

Even though I hated the idea of learning terminology as a young student, (and I still do somewhat) I had to admit, knowing at least the basic terms are very helpful. So, I will hold back, and not overdo it with terminology, I encourage you to be very familiar with every one of these terms below, and your experience will be greatly blessed. Sentence Structure:  Subject - Verb - Object

Word Types:

‣ The Two Articles:    die  and    'n
Examples:
Ek dink die kat gaan die hond byt. (I think the cat is going to bite the dog.)
Ek dink die kat gaan 'n hond byt. (I think the cat is going to bite a dog.)
Ek dink 'n kat gaan die hond byt. (I think a cat is going to bite the dog.)
Ek dink 'n kat gaan 'n hond byt. (I think the cat is going to bite the dog.)
Comment:
When « die » is used, the feel is particular, specific. and when « 'n » is used it could be any cat or dog.

‣ Nouns: The list of nouns in all languages keeps growing
Let's begin to call them things, stuff you can touch. So, anything you can see is a thing, and they are all nouns. Like tables, trees, bottles, bridges, clouds, lakes, etc. These things can also be abstract, like democracy, liberation, trends, and storms. So, let's call these «things» mental and physical entities.

You learn about nouns, so that you can understand the next term, pronouns.

‣ Pronouns: The list of pronouns is closed and it is a short list
The pronoun is word of convenience to refer to a thing (noun). The examples below will show you a paragraph without and with pronouns.

Examples:

WITHOUT → Jon thinks the cat is going to bite the dog and Jon wants Jon's dad to put the cat in the cat's cage.
WITH → Jon thinks the cat is going to bite the dog and he wants his dad to put the cat in her cage.

Comment: 
The three most valuable categories of pronouns are subject pronouns, object pronouns and possessive pronouns. In the sentence «She sees him.» The 'she' is a subject pronoun and the 'him' is an object pronoun. In the sentence «The book is mine.», the word 'mine' is a possessive pronoun. 

Tip:
As one of the first things you do in Afrikaans, learn the subject, object, and possessive pronouns by heart — know them fluidly.

‣ Prepositions: The list of prepositions is closed and it is a relatively short list
In the vocabulary section is a list of prepositions. As you can tell by the name, it has something to do with position. Examples would be words like on, under, over, through, behind, next to, above, etc. This is a short list of words, and knowing them is useful because they also combine with verbs to form new verbs just like in English. For example, you have the verb TO THROW. but you can add OUT, OVER, or IN to this verb and the meaning changes.

‣ Verbs: Related words and concepts:

Examples:

Active and Passive Voice — Understand the difference in concept. We use both freely in Afrikaans. ACTIVE is when the focus is on the person doing the action. PASSIVE is when that person doing the action is not the focus. For example: The naughty kid was punished. As you can see, the kid in not punishing, so it is not active, but passive. Other examples are: The pedestrian was knocked over. The leader was fired.

Helping Verbs — A helping verb would be added to a sentence to either change the tense, or the mood of the sentence. See below

Modals — To change the mood, we have KAN (can), WIL (want to), MAG (mag) and MOET (must). So The old lady sits. > The old lady kan sit, ... or wil sit, ... or mag sit, .... or moet sit.  Like in English, then past the take a strong form, think CAN > COULD.  KAN>KON, WIL>WOU, MAG>MOG, and MOET>MOES.

Tenses — For Future tense, we use SAL. Ek werk in Meksiko. > Ek sal in Meksiko werk. (note the verb is replaced by SAL and it moves to the end of the sentence.) For past tense we commonly use HET and then ad the prefix GE- on the web. E.g. Ek werk in Meksiko. > Ek het in Meksiko gewerk. Note the verb movement again.

Verb Types — TO BE and TO HAVE are the two unique verbs. Then you get regular verbs and unique forms. Regular verbs stay the same in the present and future. In the past regular verbs get the GE- prefix.   Talking about prefixes, here are the prefixes used in Afrikaans with verbs: ONT-, BE-, GE-, VER- and HER-. Like rewrite is herskryf. If a regular verb has a prefix, it means no GE-prefix is added in the past tense. Think of it this way, prefixes are like masks on the verbs. If a verb already has a mask (prefix), you're done. Do not add another one.

The next group of verbs are called compound verbs. These verbs have two roots. The one root is the active part and the other is the descriptor, such as throw out, pick up, etc. You have two groups. One group acts like one word, e.g. understand. and the other group splits up, like throw + out. The combinations of verbs and prepositions can be very creative to create meaning.