Learn how to ask "who"
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| Hallo almal! Ek is Annemarie. Hi everybody! I’m Annemarie. Welcome to AfrikaansPod101.com’s Afrikaans in 3 minuten, the fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Afrikaans. |
| In the last lesson, you learned how to ask "when" questions in Afrikaans. |
| This time, we’re going to ask questions using the question word wie meaning "who." |
| Imagine you see someone you don’t know at your friend’s party and would like to ask who she is. In this situation, the question you can ask is Wie is sy? meaning “Who is she?” |
| [slowly] Wie is sy? |
| Let’s break down this question. |
| First we have wie, which is the basic translation of "who" in Afrikaans. |
| Then comes is which means "is." |
| And finally comes sy meaning "she." |
| Altogether, it's Wie is sy? |
| So in Afrikaans, "who" is mainly translated as wie to ask about someone's identity. |
| For example, if you want to ask "Who are these people?" You will say Wie is die mense? You would say this when talking about a group of unknown people. |
| Again, as in English, the question word “who” is placed in the first position here, and is followed by the verb and then the subject. |
| Wie only works for people, so you can't use it to ask for information about things or places. Wie can also be used to ask who did something. |
| If you’re in a museum for instance, you can ask Wie het die skildery geskilder? This means "Who painted this painting?" |
| Another phrase with wie that is used a lot is wie se? In this case, the meaning is different, as it can be translated to "whose." |
| So if you want to ask "Whose pencil is this?" you will have to say Wie se pen is dit? |
| If we break down this question, it is- |
| Wie se, which is "whose." |
| Pen which is “pencil.” |
| Then we have is, which means “is.” |
| And finally, dit, which means "this." |
| Wie se pen is dit? |
| You can also use the word wie if you want to know who an item is for. We use the same word, wie, but place vir, which means “for,” in front of it. So it becomes vir wie. |
| For example, you can ask "For whom is this cake?" Vir wie is dit koek? |
| Breaking down this question, we have vir wie meaning “for whom,” |
| Then comes is meaning “is”. |
| Then we have the subject dit koek meaning “this cake.” |
| Vir wie is dit koek? |
| Now it’s time for Annemarie’s Tips. |
| If someone that you didn't expect is knocking at your door, you’d probably ask "Who is there?" before opening the door. In Afrikaans that is Wie is daar? However, usually Afrikaners will just say hallo? with a rising intonation to indicate that it’s a question. |
| In this lesson, you learned how to correctly use the question word for "who," which is wie in Afrikaans, and its variations - vie se and vir wie. Now you can easily know who is who! |
| The next lesson will be the last one in this absolute beginner series. We will deal with the last but not least common question word hoekom, so I’ll be waiting for you in the next Afrikaans in 3 minuten lesson. Lekker dag! |
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