Learn how to make questions and question tags in Afrikaans
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Intro |
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| Antoni: How are questions made in Afrikaans? |
| Dewan: And what about question tags? |
| Antoni: At AfrikaansPod101.com, we hear these questions often. Imagine the following situation: Driekie Venter will be hosting a party at her place, so she asks her neighbors whether or not they'll attend. Mark Lee wants to go, but seeks confirmation from his wife. |
| "Will you be coming to our party on Saturday?" |
| Driekie Venter: Gaan julle Saterdag na ons partytjie toe kom? |
| Dialogue |
| Driekie Venter: Gaan julle Saterdag na ons partytjie toe kom? |
| Mark Lee: Ja, ons gaan, nie waar nie? |
| Antoni: Once more with the English translation. |
| Driekie Venter: Gaan julle Saterdag na ons partytjie toe kom? |
| Antoni: "Will you be coming to our party on Saturday?" |
| Mark Lee: Ja, ons gaan, nie waar nie? |
| Antoni: "Yes, we are going, aren't we?" |
Lesson focus |
| Antoni: In this lesson, you will be learning how to form questions in Afrikaans and how to use question tags. Fortunately, there are quite a few similarities between English and Afrikaans when it comes to asking questions, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to understand and learn. |
| While on the subject of the similarities between Afrikaans and English, here is a fascinating example of the correlation. This question, when written out, is spelled exactly the same way in both Afrikaans and English and, unless you have context, you will not know which language is being used. Here is the question, in Afrikaans: |
| Dewan: Was my pen in my hand? |
| Antoni: In English, the same question is “Was my pen in my hand?” If you were to write out the sentence, you would see that every word is spelled exactly the same way in both languages, and the word order is exactly the same too! You will also notice that the question begins with the past-tense “be” verb, |
| Dewan: was. |
| Antoni: This is a good rule to follow in Afrikaans—when the “be” verb is present in a question, it is placed at the beginning of that question. |
| Next, let's convert a declarative sentence into an interrogative one, in other words, a question, by simply moving the “be” verb to the beginning of the sentence. Here’s the sentence: |
| Dewan: Jy is gelukkig. |
| Antoni: This means “You are happy”. Now, to change it to a question, let’s place the verb, |
| Dewan: is |
| Antoni: at the beginning of the sentence: |
| Dewan: Is jy gelukkig? |
| Antoni: This means "Are you happy?". As you can hear, this verb also immediately precedes the subject. This is a general rule one can follow when forming questions in Afrikaans. |
| The same can be done with regular verbs as well, which makes it easier than English, in this case. Let’s start with a statement, |
| Dewan: Jy kyk televisie. |
| Antoni: This means “You watch television”. If we now move the verb to the beginning of the sentence we get a question. |
| Dewan: Kyk jy televisie? |
| Antoni: This translates to “Are you watching television?”. The direct translation would be “Watch you television?” This simple way of forming questions can also be applied to auxiliary verbs. When there is a modal auxiliary verb, like “will” or |
| Dewan: sal |
| Antoni: in an Afrikaans sentence, all you have to do is move it to the beginning of the sentence to form a question. Let’s try this with the Afrikaans sentence meaning “You will go to work”: |
| Dewan: Jy sal werk toe gaan. |
| Antoni: Now, to form a question, we move the auxiliary verb to the beginning of the sentence: |
| Dewan: Sal jy werk toe gaan? |
| Antoni: This translates to “Will you go to work?”. It really is that simple. And now that you understand how to form these kinds of questions in Afrikaans, let’s have a look at question tags in Afrikaans. You already heard one of them being used in the dialogue earlier, so let’s have a listen to that again. |
| [Recall 1] |
| Antoni: Do you remember how Driekie says "Will you be coming to our party on Saturday?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Dewan as Driekie Venter: Gaan julle Saterdag na ons partytjie toe kom? |
| [Recall 2] |
| Antoni: Now let’s take a look at our second sentence. Do you remember how Mark says "Yes, we are going, aren't we?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Dewan as Mark Lee: Ja, ons gaan, nie waar nie? |
| Antoni: Here, Mark Lee responds with the question tag |
| Dewan: nie waar nie? |
| Antoni: This translates directly to “not true not?” The reason for this is that Afrikaans uses a double negative, so don’t worry too much about the second “not” in this tag. If you want to find out more about the double negative in Afrikaans please check out our lesson on the topic. |
| The English approximate of this tag is probably the slightly antiquated “not so?” These days, we’d probably just tag a question like this with “right?”. |
| You might have noticed that the question tag is placed at the end of a declarative sentence. In other words, the presence of the question tag means that the order of the words in the declarative sentence doesn’t need to change when forming a question. Take note also, that question tags are used when someone is wanting someone else to confirm information. Usually, the person asking the question is quite sure that the answer is going to be “yes”. |
| Let’s quickly review what we have learned thus far and then look at some more examples of questions we can make in Afrikaans. |
| [Summary] |
| Antoni: In this lesson, you learned that, in Afrikaans, we can change the word order of declarative sentences in order to form questions. In order to do this, we place the regular verb, auxiliary verb, or “be” verb at the beginning of the sentence, in front of the subject. The word order of the rest of the sentence remains the same. |
| You also learned about question tags in Afrikaans and that these are placed at the end of declarative sentences in order to convert them into questions. |
| Let’s now look at some more examples of tag questions in Afrikaans. We can start with the question tag |
| Dewan: of hoe? |
| Antoni: which translates directly to “or how?”, but means something along the lines of “or what?” or "right?". We’ll use it in a sentence that means “You really are studying Afrikaans, right?” |
| Dewan: Jy studeer mos Afrikaans, of hoe? |
| Antoni: There is another question tag in Afrikaans that is rather unique and doesn’t really have an equivalent in English. It's often also used as an interjection, and it sounds like this: |
| Dewan: nè? |
| Antoni: In comparison to others, this question tag often conveys even greater confidence on the part of the person asking the question, that the answer they receive will be “yes”. Here’s an example of someone asking “You do want to eat, right?” |
| Dewan: Jy wil eet, nè? |
| Antoni: One can imagine that this is someone already in the process of dishing food up for someone else. They are quite confident that they will receive an affirmative answer. |
| There is another way to form questions in Afrikaans and that is by using interrogative words. We will look at these next. |
| Expansion/Contrast (Optional) |
| Antoni: Interrogative or question words, are words like “what”, “when”, “where” “how”, “why” and so on. In Afrikaans, these are usually placed at the beginning of the sentence when forming a question. Listen to this sentence, for instance: |
| Dewan: Hoeveel karre het jy? |
| Antoni: It means “How many cars do you have?” and it starts with the question word |
| Dewan: hoeveel. |
| Antoni: In this sentence, it means “how many”, but it can also mean “how much” as in this sentence, meaning “How much does it cost?”: |
| Dewan: Hoeveel kos dit? |
| Antoni: Here is a sentence that means “What is your name?”: |
| Dewan: Wat is jou naam? |
| Antoni: As you can hear, the Afrikaans word for “what” is |
| Dewan: wat |
| Antoni: and, just as with the previous question word, it was placed at the beginning of the interrogative sentence. Let’s now listen to a sentence using the Afrikaans word for “how”: |
| Dewan: Hoe gaan dit met jou? |
| Antoni: This sentence directly translates to “How is it going with you?” and, as you can hear, the Afrikaans word for “how” is |
| Dewan: hoe. |
| Antoni: We’ll say more about that word a bit later but, for now, let’s move on to the interrogative word |
| Dewan: wanneer |
| Antoni: which means “when”. It can be used in a sentence, like this: |
| Dewan: Wanneer vertrek ons? |
| Antoni: This means “When are we leaving?”. Another very common question word is |
| Dewan: waar |
| Antoni: meaning “where”. You can use it to ask a question like “Where is my book?” or |
| Dewan: Waar is my boek? |
| Antoni: And, to conclude this segment of the lesson, let’s look at the question word |
| Dewan: hoekom |
| Antoni: or “why”. It can be used in a sentence like this one, meaning “Why are you late?”: |
| Dewan: Hoekom is jy laat? |
| Antoni: Alternatively, one could say: |
| Dewan: Waarom is jy laat? |
| Antoni: The question word |
| Dewan: waarom |
| Antoni: also means “why” but is generally perceived to be slightly more formal than |
| Dewan: hoekom. |
| Cultural Insight/Expansion (Optional) |
| Antoni: As mentioned earlier, we're going to discuss the Afrikaans word for “how” a bit more. The reason this word warrants special attention, is that it can sometimes be used in contexts where, in English, one would use a different question word. Take this sentence, for instance: |
| Dewan: Hoe is die weer? |
| Antoni: This sentence begins with the Afrikaans word for “how” but, in English, it would be “What is the weather like?” Another example is the sentence: “What is the time?”: |
| Dewan: Hoe laat is dit? |
| Antoni: The direct translation of this sentence is “How late is it?” For this reason, one should be cautious and not make the mistake of always translating the word |
| Dewan: hoe |
| Antoni: into “how” in English questions. |
Outro |
| Antoni: Do you have any more questions? We’re here to answer them! |
| Dewan: Totsiens! |
| Antoni: See you soon! |
| Credits: Dewan (Afrikaans, Pietermaritzburg), Antoni (English, synthetic voice) |
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