Talking About Likes and Dislikes

Saying what you like is one of the first things you want to do in any new language, and Afrikaans has a small, tidy toolkit for it. The catch is that the most basic verb, hou, refuses to stand on its own — it always drags the preposition van along behind it, and English speakers forget it constantly. Get hou van into your bones, learn the handful of stronger and weaker expressions around it, and you can talk about everything from coffee to your in-laws.

hou van: the everyday "to like"

The workhorse is hou van — literally "hold of" — and the van is not optional. hou alone does not mean "like"; it is the van that carries the meaning. Whatever you like goes after van.

To say you like an activity, you can put an om te infinitive after van — but in practice Afrikaans usually prefers a smoother construction, graag (see below), for liking to do something.

Notice daarvan there: when the thing liked would be a pronoun or a clause, van fuses with daar into daarvan ("of it"). This is a recurring Afrikaans pattern with prepositions — see verbs with prepositions.

graag: liking to do something

To say you like doing an activity, Afrikaans does not usually stack an infinitive after hou van. Instead it uses the adverb graag ("gladly, with pleasure") right inside the sentence with an ordinary verb. Ek lees graag is the natural way to say "I like reading / I like to read."

This is a real structural difference from English, where "like" + verb covers both objects and activities. In Afrikaans, liking a thing uses hou van + noun, but liking an activity typically uses graag + verb. The fuller story, including the comparative liewer ("rather, prefer to"), is on graag and liewer.

That last sentence shows the split cleanly: graag with the activity (drink tee), hou van with the disliked thing (koffie).

Loving it: gaande wees oor and mal wees oor

For stronger enthusiasm — "be crazy about, absolutely love" — Afrikaans has two vivid idioms, both built with oor ("about"):

• gaande wees oor — "be enthusiastic / wild about" (literally "be going about")
• mal wees oor — "be crazy about" (mal = mad)

Both are warmer and more emphatic than hou van, and both take oor, not van — a small but easy-to-miss difference.

Wanting it now: lus wees vir / lus wees om te

Here is a construction English has no clean verb for, and it is high-frequency: lus wees vir expresses a present craving or being in the mood for something — "to feel like / fancy" right now. It is not a general liking but a momentary appetite.

Use vir before a noun and om te before a verb: Ek is lus om fliek toe te gaan (I feel like going to the cinema). The key distinction to hold onto: hou van is a standing preference ("I like tea generally"), while lus wees vir is a craving in the moment ("I fancy tea right now"). English blurs both into "I'd like," so this is genuinely new conceptual territory.

The negative: hou nie van ... nie

To say you don't like something, you wrap the sentence in Afrikaans's signature double negative: nie ... nie. The first nie comes after the verb; the second nie closes the clause at the end. So "I don't like fish" is Ek hou *nie van vis nie*.

That closing nie is obligatory — leaving it off is one of the most recognisable learner errors. The full system is on negation.

Can't stand it: kan nie ... verdra/uitstaan nie

For active dislike — "can't stand, can't bear" — use kan nie ... verdra nie or kan nie ... uitstaan nie. The disliked thing sits in the middle, between the modal kan nie and the verb, with the closing nie at the end.

Preferring: verkies

To say you prefer one thing over another, use verkies (prefer) with bo ("above, over") for the thing ranked lower:

For the more conversational "I'd rather," Afrikaans uses liewer — covered on graag and liewer.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• hou van is the everyday "to like," and the van is obligatory: Ek hou van koffie, never Ek hou koffie.
• To like doing something, use graag with the verb (Ek lees graag), not hou van + infinitive.
• Strong love is gaande/mal wees oor — note the preposition oor: Ek is mal oor sjokolade.
• lus wees vir / om te is a present craving ("feel like, fancy"), distinct from the general preference of hou van, with no neat English verb.
• The negative wraps in nie ... nie: Ek hou *nie van vis nie*. Strong dislike is kan nie ... verdra/uitstaan nie.
• verkies ... bo means "prefer ... to"; for "I'd rather," see graag and liewer.