Tye(Tenses) in Afrikaans: Present, Past and Future with Exercises

Present tense: one verb form for everyone

In the present tense, the verb stays the same for every person. There’s no extra -s like in English (I walk, he walks).

Even to be and to have stay the same: ek is, jy is, hy is, ons is and ek het, sy het, hulle het.

Afrikaans also has no -ing form. Ek eet means both “I eat” and “I am eating”. If you really want to stress that it’s happening right now, say Ek is besig om te eet.

Past tense: het + ge-

To make the past tense:

1. Put het straight after the subject (it’s the second idea in the sentence).
2. Put ge- in front of the verb and move it to the end of the sentence.

Notice geëet: when ge- meets a verb starting with e, you add a diaeresis (deelteken) so you say both parts: ge-eet. Same with geërf (inherited).

If there’s a nie in the sentence, it stays where it is: Hy het nie geslaap nie.

Verbs that don't take ge-

Verbs that start with the unstressed prefixes be-, ge-, her-, ont-, ver- and er- don’t get an extra ge- in the past tense. You still use het; the verb just stays as it is.

Trick: if you’d end up with two prefixes (ge-be-…, ge-ver-…), drop the ge-.

Separable verbs: ge- goes in the middle

Some verbs split in two in the present tense: opstaan (get up), aantrek (get dressed), skoonmaak (clean). In the past tense, the two parts join again at the end, with ge- in the middle, written as one word.

Special past forms

A few very common verbs don’t use het + ge-. Learn these by heart.

With the modal verbs (kan, wil, sal, moet, mag), you just swap the modal for its past form. Don’t add het, and the main verb at the end stays as it is (no ge-).

Two verbs have an old-fashioned past form as well:

• weet (know): use Ek het die antwoord geweet. The form Ek wis die antwoord also exists, but it sounds old-fashioned or literary.
• dink (think): use Ek het gedink jy is siek. The form Ek dog jy is siek (usually meaning “I thought so, but I was wrong”) is also old-fashioned.

For your own writing, stick to het geweet and het gedink. Just recognise wis and dog when you see them in a story.

Future tense: sal + verb at the end

To make the future tense, put sal in second position and move the verb to the end. The verb doesn’t change and gets no ge-.

Watch the last two: after sal, is becomes wees and het becomes hê.

For plans and things that are about to happen, you can also use gaan, just like English “going to”:

Time word first? The verb stays second

If you start a sentence with a time word, the verb (het, sal or the present-tense verb) still comes second, so it jumps in front of the subject.