If you have come to Afrikaans from Dutch or German, this page fixes the single most damaging habit you carry with you. In those languages, choosing the right perfect auxiliary is a genuine puzzle: some verbs take hebben/haben, others take zijn/sein, and you have to know which is which. Afrikaans erased that puzzle entirely. Every active perfect uses het — no exceptions, no lists to memorise. The only time you ever see is with a past participle, it is not a perfect at all: it is a passive or a stative. Once you see that het versus is is nothing more than the line between active and passive, the whole thing collapses into a clean rule.
The headline rule: active perfect = het, always
To say that something happened — that an action took place — you use het plus the participle (the verb with ge-), with the participle at the end of the clause. This holds for every verb in the language, whatever it means: movement, change of state, staying put, anything.
Ek het gekom sodra ek jou boodskap gekry het.
I came as soon as I got your message.
Sy het in die stoel aan die slaap geraak.
She fell asleep in the chair.
Die ou man het stil in sy stoel gebly.
The old man stayed quietly in his chair.
Look at what those three verbs would do in Dutch. Komen ("come", motion to a goal) takes zijn; in slaap raken (change of state) takes zijn; blijven ("stay") takes zijn. All three are exactly the verbs that trip up learners into reaching for is. In Afrikaans they all take het, with no hesitation, because Afrikaans does not care whether the verb is motion, change, or rest. If the subject did the action, the auxiliary is het.
So what is "is + participle" then?
You will meet is next to a past participle constantly. It is real Afrikaans — it just does not mean "has done". It means one of two closely related things, and both are about the receiving end of an action rather than the doing of it.
The passive — somebody or something received the action; the doer is backgrounded or absent. Here is is the present-tense passive auxiliary (its past is was):
Die brief is gister geskryf en vanoggend gepos.
The letter was written yesterday and posted this morning.
Die dief is laasnag deur die bure gevang.
The thief was caught last night by the neighbours.
The stative / adjectival result — the participle describes a state the subject is now in, not an event. Here the participle behaves almost like an adjective:
Die deur is gesluit — ek het die sleutel nie.
The door is locked — I don't have the key.
Moenie worry nie, alles is reeds gereël.
Don't worry, everything is already arranged.
In Die deur is gesluit you are not saying "the door has locked itself"; you are describing the door's current condition. That is why English so often translates it with plain is ("the door is locked") and only sometimes with a passive ("the door was locked [by someone]"). Afrikaans uses one shape for both because both are non-active.
The clean contrast: het vs is is active vs passive
Put the two side by side and the rule becomes a reflex. The same verb, skryf ("write"), takes het when you name the writer and is when you do not:
| Active perfect (het) | Passive / stative (is) |
|---|---|
| Ek het die brief geskryf. I wrote the letter. | Die brief is geskryf. The letter was written. |
| Hulle het die deur gesluit. They locked the door. | Die deur is gesluit. The door is locked. |
| Iemand het dit reeds gereël. Someone already arranged it. | Dit is reeds gereël. It's already arranged. |
Notice the test built into the contrast: if you can add a doer as the grammatical subject ("I", "they", "someone"), use het. If the doer is gone and the subject is the thing acted upon, use is. That is the entire decision — and it is far cleaner than Dutch, where you must remember a lexical list of zijn-verbs that has nothing to do with active versus passive.
Why Afrikaans is simpler than Dutch here
It is worth understanding why the split disappeared, because it removes any worry that you are missing a hidden rule. Cape Dutch, the ancestor of Afrikaans, went through heavy contact-driven simplification in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The semantically motivated but inconsistent hebben/zijn distinction — which even native Dutch speakers occasionally disagree on — was one of the casualties. The result is a system with a single active auxiliary, het, descended from het ("has"), generalised to every verb regardless of meaning.
So the comparison to keep in mind:
| Meaning | Dutch perfect | Afrikaans perfect |
|---|---|---|
| I have come | ik ben gekomen | ek het gekom |
| I have gone | ik ben gegaan | ek het gegaan |
| I have fallen | ik ben gevallen | ek het geval |
| I have stayed | ik ben gebleven | ek het gebly |
| I have eaten | ik heb gegeten | ek het geëet |
Every Dutch ben in that column becomes Afrikaans het. For an English speaker the comfort is even greater: English has only one perfect auxiliary too ("have"), so the Afrikaans system maps onto your instinct directly — "I have come, I have gone, I have stayed" all use have, and all use het.
Common mistakes
The errors below are the classic transfer slips. The first two are the ones Dutch and German speakers make almost daily; the rest catch English speakers who over-think the passive.
❌ Ek is gister huis toe gegaan.
Incorrect — Dutch/German zijn/sein transfer; an active motion perfect never takes is.
✅ Ek het gister huis toe gegaan.
I went home yesterday.
❌ Hy is vroeg opgestaan en is werk toe.
Incorrect — both perfects are active and must use het.
✅ Hy het vroeg opgestaan en het werk toe gegaan.
He got up early and went to work.
❌ Die kinders is in die park gespeel.
Incorrect — the children did the playing, so this is active: use het.
✅ Die kinders het in die park gespeel.
The children played in the park.
❌ Die brief het deur die sekretaresse geskryf.
Incorrect — there is no active subject doing the writing here; this is a passive and needs is.
✅ Die brief is deur die sekretaresse geskryf.
The letter was written by the secretary.
❌ Ons is baie gelukkig gewees verlede jaar.
Incorrect — for an active state-perfect with gewees, use het; gewees is the participle of wees.
✅ Ons was baie gelukkig verlede jaar.
We were very happy last year.
That last pair flags a related trap: for "was/were" as a plain past, Afrikaans uses the surviving preterite was, not a perfect at all. Ek was ("I was"), not ek het gewees in most everyday speech — see the past tense overview.
Key takeaways
- Every active perfect in Afrikaans uses
het— motion, change of state, staying, all of it. There is no hebben/zijn split. is- participle is never an active perfect.
- The decision is mechanical: if there is a doer-subject, use
het; if the subject is the thing acted upon, useis. The het/is line is exactly the active/passive line. - Dutch and German speakers: every ben/bin perfect you know maps to
het. Delete any is you are tempted to put in an active perfect — see Dutch transfer in the perfect.
Now practice Afrikaans
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- Choosing the Perfect Auxiliary: hetB1 — Afrikaans uses het as the perfect auxiliary for every active verb — there is no hebben/zijn or haben/sein split — and the only is + participle you ever meet is the passive, not an active perfect.
- The Past Tense: het + ge-participleA1 — Afrikaans has one ordinary past tense — het plus a ge-participle at the end of the clause — and it covers both 'I walked' and 'I have walked'.
- The Stative Passive with is/wasB2 — How Afrikaans uses is plus a past participle for the perfect passive ('has been written') and the resulting-state passive ('is written'), with was for the past.
- word vs is (dynamic vs stative passive)B2 — Afrikaans splits the passive in two: word + participle for an action in progress, is/was + participle for the finished result — disambiguating what English smears together.
- Dutch Transfer: is vs het in the PerfectB1 — Dutch speakers reflexively use is (zijn) for motion verbs in the perfect — Afrikaans uses het for every active perfect and keeps is only for the passive.
- Choosing Between Confusable Forms: OverviewB1 — A guide to the Afrikaans 'which one?' problems — maak vs doen, neem vs vat, na vs toe, jy vs u and more — and why most of them hinge on register or word order rather than meaning.