Once you can build a basic passive — Die brief word geskryf (the letter is written), covered on the passive with word — a harder question follows: what happens when the verb has two objects, or an object buried inside a preposition? A verb like gee (to give) has both a thing given (the theme) and a person it is given to (the recipient). When you passivise it, only one of them can become the new subject. And a verb like wag op (to wait for) has no plain object at all — yet Afrikaans can still passivise it, producing a sentence with no subject whatsoever. That last construction is the summit of the Afrikaans passive, and most learners never reach it.
This page assumes you already know that the present passive is word + past participle and the past passive is is + past participle.
Ditransitives: the theme becomes the subject
A ditransitive verb — gee (give), stuur (send), wys (show), leer (teach), belowe (promise) — takes a theme (the thing) and a recipient (the person). In the active sentence both are present:
Sy gee die boek vir hom.
She gives the book to him.
When you passivise, the default and overwhelmingly natural choice is to promote the theme to subject. The recipient stays exactly where it was, still marked by vir:
Die boek word vir hom gegee.
The book is given to him.
Die pakkie is gister vir my gestuur.
The parcel was sent to me yesterday.
Die nuwe stelsel is aan die personeel verduidelik.
The new system was explained to the staff.
The logic is worth spelling out. The passive exists to put the spotlight on the affected entity — and in a giving event, the thing that physically moves, that "undergoes" the action, is the theme. So the theme is the unmarked passive subject. The recipient, being a person who receives rather than is acted upon, hangs back in its prepositional phrase.
Keeping the recipient: vir vs aan
The recipient in the passive can be introduced by either vir or aan, and the choice is partly a matter of register and verb. vir is the everyday, conversational marker (see the dative use of vir and the survey of datives on double objects and datives). aan is slightly more formal and is especially natural with verbs of transfer and communication — stuur (send), gee (give), rig (address), verduidelik (explain) — and it dominates in written and official registers.
Die brief is aan my gestuur.
The letter was sent to me.
'n Amptelike uitnodiging is aan alle lede gerig.
An official invitation was addressed to all members.
Die prys is aan die jong skrywer toegeken.
The prize was awarded to the young writer.
Both Die boek is vir hom gegee and Die boek is aan hom gegee are correct; the first sounds like speech, the second like a formal notice.
Why the recipient does not readily become the subject
English speakers have a built-in trap here. English happily promotes the recipient: He was given the book is perfectly normal English, alongside The book was given to him. Afrikaans does not share this freedom. There is no natural Hy word die boek gegee. The recipient stays inside its vir / aan phrase; only the theme rises to subject position.
This is one of the clearest places where English transfer goes wrong, precisely because the English version sounds so unremarkable. If your instinct produces a passive where a person is the subject and a bare thing dangles after the participle, you have built an English sentence with Afrikaans words.
Daar is aan elke kind 'n geskenk gegee.
A gift was given to each child.
Notice the workaround the language reaches for when it wants to background the theme: the impersonal daar construction (more on which below), not recipient-promotion.
The prepositional passive
Now the genuinely advanced territory. Many Afrikaans verbs take their object through a fixed preposition rather than directly: wag op (wait for), soek na (search for), verlang na (long for), dink aan (think of), reken op (count on), wag vir (wait for). These have no plain direct object — the "object" lives inside the prepositional phrase: Ons wag op die uitslag (we are waiting for the result).
Because there is no direct object to promote, Afrikaans builds the passive impersonally, using the placeholder daar (there) in subject position and keeping the preposition with its noun intact. The verb still agrees with nothing in particular; daar simply fills the grammatical subject slot (the same existential daar treated on existential daar).
Daar word op die uitslag gewag.
The result is being waited for. / People are waiting for the result.
Daar word na 'n oplossing gesoek.
A solution is being sought.
Daar word lank na die ou dae verlang.
The old days are much longed for.
Read those English translations again: there is no clean, idiomatic way to render them. English has to fall back on either an awkward stranded-preposition passive (the result is being waited for) or an impersonal people / one. Afrikaans does it in a single, register-neutral move.
The subjectless impersonal passive
Push this one step further and you reach the construction that has no real English counterpart at all: an impersonal prepositional passive describing an action done to a person, with no subject anywhere in the sentence.
Daar word na jou gesoek.
You are being looked for. / Someone is looking for you.
Daar word op die nuwe minister gereken.
The new minister is being counted on.
Daar is gisteraand na die vermiste kind gesoek.
There was a search for the missing child last night.
Grammatically, daar is a dummy — it carries no meaning, just holds the subject slot open so the clause is well-formed. The real semantic content (who is looked for) sits inside na jou. Nothing has been promoted to subject; the sentence is genuinely subjectless at the level of meaning. English simply cannot do this — it must invent a subject (you, someone, people) — which is exactly why the construction reads as so distinctly Afrikaans. When you can produce Daar word na jou gesoek without translating word-for-word from English, you have internalised something most reference grammars for learners never even mention.
A note on the agent
In all of these, you can optionally name the agent with deur (by), just as in the basic passive — but the whole point of the impersonal passive is usually to avoid naming an agent, so deur is rare there.
Die boek is deur die uitgewer aan die resensente gestuur.
The book was sent to the reviewers by the publisher.
Common mistakes
❌ Hy word die boek gegee.
Incorrect (English transfer) — Afrikaans does not promote the recipient; the theme becomes the subject.
✅ Die boek word vir hom gegee.
The book is given to him.
❌ Die uitslag word gewag.
Incorrect — wag op has no direct object to promote; the preposition must be kept and the passive made impersonal.
✅ Daar word op die uitslag gewag.
The result is being waited for.
❌ Jy word gesoek na.
Incorrect — you cannot promote the object of a fixed preposition; use the impersonal daar and keep na with its noun.
✅ Daar word na jou gesoek.
You are being looked for.
❌ My is die brief gestuur.
Incorrect — the recipient cannot be the subject, and an object pronoun cannot sit in subject position anyway.
✅ Die brief is aan my gestuur.
The letter was sent to me.
Key takeaways
- In a ditransitive passive the theme (the thing) becomes the subject; the recipient stays in a vir / aan phrase: Die boek word vir hom gegee.
- vir is conversational, aan is more formal — Die brief is aan my gestuur.
- Afrikaans, unlike English, does not promote the recipient to subject — there is no Hy word die boek gegee.
- Prepositional verbs (wag op, soek na) passivise impersonally with daar, keeping the preposition: Daar word op die uitslag gewag.
- The crowning case is the subjectless impersonal passive — Daar word na jou gesoek ("you are being looked for") — which has no direct English equivalent; see also existential daar.
Now practice Afrikaans
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- The Passive with wordB1 — How Afrikaans forms the dynamic (action) passive with word plus a past participle, and why word — not is — is the auxiliary for an action being carried out.
- Double Objects and Dative AlternationB2 — Ditransitive verbs like gee let you say both 'gee my die boek' and 'gee die boek vir my' — the same meaning, two orders, with a soft pull toward fronting pronoun recipients.
- Existential and Presentational daarB1 — How daar builds 'there is / there are' sentences, why the verb never agrees in number, and how presentational daar with motion verbs becomes a vivid narrative device.