A small group of Afrikaans verbs are inherently reflexive: they always carry an object pronoun pointing back at the subject, even though the matching English verb takes no object at all. Ek skaam my is "I'm ashamed", haas jou is "hurry up", sy bekommer haar is "she's worrying". The pronoun is not optional emphasis — it is part of the verb, and the sentence is broken without it. This page is about the single most common error English speakers make with these verbs: dropping that pronoun because English never asked for one.
Why English speakers drop it
The error has one clean cause. For to be ashamed, to hurry, to worry, to imagine, to behave, English uses a plain intransitive verb with no reflexive: you say "I'm ashamed", not "I ashame myself". So when an English speaker reaches for the Afrikaans verb, there is no cue in the source language telling them an object is coming. They produce ek skaam and stop, exactly as English would.
The trouble is that ek skaam is not a softer or rougher version of the right sentence — it is not a sentence. The Afrikaans verb skaam simply does not stand alone. Compare this with a verb like was (to wash), where ek was ("I'm washing", with no object) is perfectly fine: was is optionally reflexive, skaam is obligatorily reflexive. That difference lives in the dictionary, not in any rule you can derive, which is why these verbs have to be learned with their pronoun attached, as a two-word unit: jou skaam, jou haas, jou bekommer.
The pronoun matches the subject
The reflexive here is just the ordinary object pronoun, chosen to agree with the subject — my, jou, hom, haar, ons, julle, hulle (see subject and object pronouns). There is no separate reflexive word like Dutch zich. So the verb changes its pronoun across the persons:
| Subject | Reflexive | Example (jou skaam) |
|---|---|---|
| ek | my | Ek skaam my. |
| jy | jou | Jy skaam jou. |
| hy | hom | Hy skaam hom. |
| sy | haar | Sy skaam haar. |
| ons | ons | Ons skaam ons. |
| julle | julle | Julle skaam julle. |
| hulle | hulle | Hulle skaam hulle. |
Ek skaam my dood oor wat ek gesê het.
I'm mortally ashamed of what I said.
Sy bekommer haar oor die kinders se veiligheid.
She worries about the children's safety.
Julle moet julle gedra in die kerk.
You (all) have to behave in church.
Note that the pronoun does not move to the end with the verb — in a main clause it sits right after the verb, in the normal object slot. Only word order rules (questions, imperatives) shift it.
The verbs that bite hardest
These are the inherently reflexive verbs that English speakers most often leave bare. There are more on inherent reflexives, but master this core list first.
| Afrikaans | English | Bare verb in English? |
|---|---|---|
| jou skaam | to be ashamed | yes — no reflexive |
| jou haas | to hurry | yes — no reflexive |
| jou bekommer | to worry | yes — no reflexive |
| jou verbeel | to imagine (wrongly) | yes — no reflexive |
| jou gedra | to behave | yes — no reflexive |
| jou verset | to resist / object | yes — no reflexive |
Every row is a trap precisely because the English column gives you nothing to hang the pronoun on. I'm ashamed — where would "myself" even go? That void in English is the whole problem, and it is why the reflexive has to be a memorised property of the Afrikaans word.
Haas jou, ons trein vertrek oor tien minute!
Hurry up, our train leaves in ten minutes!
Hy verbeel hom dat almal na hom kyk.
He imagines that everyone is looking at him.
Die werkers het hulle teen die nuwe reëls verset.
The workers resisted the new rules.
Wrong-to-right pairs
Each pair below is the exact error an English speaker produces, followed by the form a native speaker would say. The fix is always the same: insert the object pronoun that agrees with the subject.
❌ Sy skaam oor haar punte.
Incorrect — skaam needs its reflexive pronoun.
✅ Sy skaam haar oor haar punte.
She's ashamed of her marks.
❌ Hy haas na die werk toe.
Incorrect — haas is inherently reflexive.
✅ Hy haas hom na die werk toe.
He hurries off to work.
❌ Ek verbeel dis makliker as wat dit is.
Incorrect — verbeel requires the reflexive my.
✅ Ek verbeel my dis makliker as wat dit is.
I imagine it's easier than it is.
❌ Sy bekommer oor niks nie.
Incorrect — bekommer needs the reflexive haar.
✅ Sy bekommer haar oor niks nie.
She worries about nothing.
❌ Die kinders gedra sleg.
Incorrect — gedra is inherently reflexive.
✅ Die kinders gedra hulle sleg.
The children are behaving badly.
❌ Moet nie verset nie.
Incorrect — verset takes a reflexive pronoun.
✅ Moet jou nie verset nie.
Don't resist.
The opposite error: over-marking with -self
There is a mirror-image mistake worth flagging. Because English emphatic reflexives end in -self (myself, herself), learners sometimes "upgrade" the plain object pronoun to jouself, haarself. With these inherent reflexives that is wrong: they take the bare object pronoun, not the -self form.
❌ Haas jouself!
Incorrect — the inherent reflexive haas takes plain jou.
✅ Haas jou!
Hurry up!
❌ Sy skaam haarself oor dit.
Overmarked — use the plain object haar with skaam.
✅ Sy skaam haar oor dit.
She's ashamed of it.
The -self form belongs with verbs where you genuinely need to disambiguate "herself" from "her" (sy sien haarself in die spieël — see reflexive pronouns). With an obligatory reflexive there is no other reading to rule out, so the plain pronoun is the correct and natural choice.
Common mistakes
❌ Ek skaam.
Incorrect — bare skaam is not a sentence; it needs my.
✅ Ek skaam my.
I'm ashamed.
❌ Hy haas.
Incorrect — haas is obligatorily reflexive.
✅ Hy haas hom.
He's hurrying.
❌ Ek verbeel.
Incorrect — verbeel needs the reflexive pronoun.
✅ Ek verbeel my.
I imagine (so).
❌ Moenie bekommer nie.
Incorrect — bekommer needs jou inside the negation bracket.
✅ Moenie jou bekommer nie.
Don't worry.
❌ Ons skaam haar.
Incorrect — the pronoun must agree with the subject ons.
✅ Ons skaam ons.
We're ashamed.
Key takeaways
- A handful of Afrikaans verbs are inherently reflexive — jou skaam, jou haas, jou bekommer, jou verbeel, jou gedra, jou verset — and the matching English verb has no reflexive, so English gives you no cue to add the pronoun.
- The fix is lexical, not rule-based: memorise each verb with its pronoun as a two-word unit (jou skaam), the way you'd memorise an irregular plural.
- The reflexive is the plain object pronoun agreeing with the subject: ek skaam my, sy skaam haar, hulle skaam hulle — there's no Dutch zich.
- Don't over-correct to -self: these verbs take jou, not jouself (haas jou!, never haas jouself!).
- Inside a negation, the pronoun stays put: moenie jou bekommer nie. See inherent reflexives and the reflexive verbs reference for the full list.
Now practice Afrikaans
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- Inherently Reflexive VerbsB2 — A small closed set of Afrikaans verbs that obligatorily take a reflexive object although English does not — jou skaam (be ashamed), jou verbeel (imagine), jou haas (hurry).
- Reflexive Verbs ReferenceB1 — The complete lookup table of common Afrikaans reflexive verbs — the inherent ones that always need a reflexive pronoun (jou skaam, jou haas, jou vergis) and the optional ones that can take any object (jou was, jou aantrek), with the pronoun pattern for every subject.
- Reflexive Pronouns and -selfB1 — Afrikaans has no dedicated reflexive like Dutch zich — the ordinary object pronoun does the job (ek was my, hy skeer hom), -self adds emphasis or disambiguates, and mekaar means 'each other'.
- Reflexive Verbs and PronounsB1 — Afrikaans builds reflexive constructions from the ordinary object pronouns (ek was my, sy skaam haar) — there is no special reflexive like Dutch zich — and -self adds emphasis.
- Subject and Object PronounsA1 — The full Afrikaans personal pronoun set — ek/my, jy/jou, hy/hom, sy/haar and the rest — with subject and object forms and where they go in a sentence.