Afrikaans grew up on farms, and it shows nowhere more clearly than in how it talks about the weather. Where English keeps weather and emotion fairly separate, Afrikaans lets them bleed into each other: a person can be a mooiweersvriend (fair-weather friend), you can mooiweer praat (sweet-talk someone), and a tense family gathering can have its own "weather." This page covers the everyday machinery of weather talk — the impersonal dit-verbs — and then the figurative layer that competitors usually miss, where weather doubles as a metaphor for moods, relationships, and trouble.
The grammar of weather: impersonal dit
Weather statements in Afrikaans almost always start with dit ("it"), exactly as in English, paired with a verb that needs no real subject. This is the impersonal dit construction.
| Afrikaans | English |
|---|---|
| dit reën | it's raining |
| dit sneeu | it's snowing (rare in South Africa) |
| dit waai | it's windy / the wind is blowing |
| dit hael | it's hailing |
| dit donder | it's thundering |
| dit blits / weerlig | there's lightning |
Dit reën al die hele oggend.
It's been raining all morning.
Dit waai vandag verskriklik — hou jou hoed vas.
It's terribly windy today — hold onto your hat.
Rain that pours: the vivid idioms
A light shower barely gets a mention, but heavy rain has produced some of the most colourful idioms in the language. The classic is dit reën dat dit giet — literally "it rains so that it pours" — the standard way to say it's bucketing down.
Vat 'n sambreel saam — dit reën dat dit giet.
Take an umbrella — it's absolutely pouring.
Even more vivid is dit reën pype stokke (literally "it's raining pipes and sticks"), the Afrikaans equivalent of "raining cats and dogs."
Ons kon nie uitgaan nie; dit het pype stokke gereën.
We couldn't go out; it was raining cats and dogs.
For oppressive heat, dit is bloedig warm ("it's blazing hot") or the everyday dit is smoorwarm ("it's stiflingly hot") do the work.
Sit die lugreëling aan — dit is bloedig warm hierbinne.
Put the air-con on — it's blazing hot in here.
The poetry of dusk and the cold front
Some weather phrases are simply beautiful and worth having. Die son sak ("the sun is setting," literally "sinking") is the everyday way to describe sunset, and you'll hear it in casual speech, not just poetry.
Kom ons stap voor die son sak.
Let's take a walk before the sun sets.
A koue front ("cold front") is the weather-report term that has fully entered daily speech, especially in the winter-rainfall Cape.
Hulle sê 'n koue front is op pad — dit gaan vanaand baie kouer word.
They say a cold front is on the way — it'll get much colder tonight.
You may also meet the wry bokkomweer — humid, sticky coastal weather, named after bokkoms (sun-dried mullet from the West Coast). It is regional and folksy, the kind of word that signals you really know your Afrikaans.
Weather as metaphor: the layer learners miss
Here is the insight that sets Afrikaans apart. Weather words routinely describe people, moods, and relationships — and if you take them literally you'll miss the meaning entirely.
The most important is mooiweer praat — literally "to talk fine-weather," meaning to flatter, butter up, or sweet-talk someone, usually to get something out of them. It has a faintly cynical edge.
Hy probeer net mooiweer praat sodat jy hom kan help.
He's just sweet-talking you so you'll help him.
From the same root comes mooiweersvriend — a "fair-weather friend," someone who's around in good times but vanishes when things get hard. English has the identical metaphor, which makes this one easy to remember.
Toe ek my werk verloor het, het ek gou geleer wie my mooiweersvriende was.
When I lost my job, I quickly learned who my fair-weather friends were.
A heavy, tense atmosphere — the kind you can feel before an argument — gets its own weather: people say daar hang 'n donderwolk ("there's a thundercloud hanging") or that the weer (weather/mood) in the house is bad.
Daar het 'n donderwolk oor die ete gehang.
A thundercloud hung over dinner.
And from the old farming world comes the gloriously vivid dit reën ou vrouens met knopkieries ("it's raining old women with knobkerries") — a folksy, slightly comic way to describe a real downpour, the closest the language gets to the spirit of "raining cats and dogs."
Toe ons by die huis kom, het dit ou vrouens met knopkieries gereën.
By the time we got home, it was absolutely bucketing down.
Stof in die oë gooi — throwing dust in the eyes
Not strictly weather, but firmly in the nature-and-elements family is stof in die oë gooi — literally "to throw dust in the eyes," meaning to deceive or pull the wool over someone's eyes. It captures the same dusty, agrarian world the weather idioms come from.
Moenie jou laat flous nie — hulle gooi net stof in jou oë.
Don't be fooled — they're just pulling the wool over your eyes.
Common mistakes
❌ Dit is reën.
Incorrect — reën here is a verb, so no 'is': you don't say 'it is rain'.
✅ Dit reën.
It's raining.
❌ Hy het mooiweer met my gepraat (intending 'he flattered me').
Incorrect — the idiom is the fixed compound mooiweer praat, not 'mooiweer met iemand praat'.
✅ Hy het mooiweer gepraat om my te oortuig.
He sweet-talked to win me over.
❌ Hy is 'n mooiweer vriend.
Spelling — it's the single compound mooiweersvriend (with a linking -s-), not two words.
✅ Hy is 'n mooiweersvriend.
He's a fair-weather friend.
❌ Dit reën katte en honde.
Incorrect — a word-for-word calque of the English idiom; Afrikaans says it differently.
✅ Dit reën pype stokke. / Dit reën dat dit giet.
It's raining cats and dogs.
❌ Die son sit.
Incorrect verb — the sun 'sinks' (sak), it doesn't 'sit'.
✅ Die son sak.
The sun is setting.
Key takeaways
- Weather statements use impersonal dit
- verb: dit reën, dit waai, dit hael. Don't insert is before a weather verb.
- Heavy rain is dit reën dat dit giet or dit reën pype stokke — never the calqued "katte en honde."
- Sunset is die son sak; a koue front is everyday vocabulary, especially in the Cape.
- The figurative layer is the prize: mooiweer praat (flatter), mooiweersvriend (fair-weather friend), and donderwolk (a tense, brooding mood) — weather words that describe people, not the sky.
- For more figurative language see everyday idioms and animal idioms.
Now practice Afrikaans
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- Everyday IdiomsB1 — A curated set of high-frequency Afrikaans idioms — vivid rural and weather images whose grammar is transparent but whose meaning is not — with literal and idiomatic glosses.
- Afrikaans Proverbs: OverviewB1 — An orientation to Afrikaans spreekwoorde — their agrarian imagery, their shared roots with Dutch, and how they compress distinctive grammar into memorable form.
- Impersonal Constructions: dit and daarB2 — Afrikaans uses dummy dit for weather, time and evaluation (dit reën, dit is laat) and existential daar for 'there is/are' (daar is) — with daar is invariant for number.
- Expressing Emotions and StatesB1 — How Afrikaans splits feelings between wees + adjective for emotions and kry for developing sensations — ek is bly versus ek kry koud — plus the idioms of mood.
- Idioms with AnimalsB2 — Traditional Afrikaans animal idioms — the ox, the fox, the snake, the sheep, the peacock, the horse — and how they lean on the soos-comparison and the se-possessive that you already know from core grammar.