Prepositions are the small connective words that tell you where, when, and how something relates to something else — in, op, met, van. Afrikaans prepositions are, in one crucial respect, far gentler than their German cousins: they trigger no case. There are no endings to change on the noun that follows, ever. But Afrikaans does two things English never does — it uses a postposition, toe, to mark direction, and it wraps some relationships in circumpositions like van ... af. This page sketches the whole system; the detailed pages handle each piece.
No case to govern
In German, every preposition forces a particular case on the noun after it, and you must memorise which. Afrikaans threw all of that away. A preposition here is simply placed in front of its noun, and the noun does not change at all.
Die kos is op die tafel.
The food is on the table.
Ek praat met my suster.
I'm talking to my sister.
Whether the noun is subject, object, or sitting after a preposition, it keeps exactly the same shape. This means learning Afrikaans prepositions is mostly about learning which preposition fits which situation — never about grammatical agreement. For an English speaker that is a relief, because English works the same way: position, not case.
Many are cognate with English
A large share of the most common prepositions are visibly related to English, which gives you a head start.
| Afrikaans | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| in | in | in die huis |
| op | on | op die tafel |
| onder | under | onder die bed |
| oor | over / about | oor die brug |
| by | at / by | by die deur |
| met | with | met my pa |
| van | of / from | van Kaapstad |
| voor | before / in front of | voor die skool |
Die kinders speel in die huis.
The children are playing in the house.
Daar is 'n hond onder die bed.
There's a dog under the bed.
The catch, as always, is that the boundaries differ. Afrikaans says op die foto where English says "in the photo," and op skool for "at school." These mismatches are the real work, and they are collected on location prepositions and time prepositions.
The destination postposition: toe
Here is the first structure English simply does not have. To express movement toward a destination, Afrikaans places the word toe after the place — a postposition, not a preposition. Dorp toe means "to town," literally "town-ward."
Ons gaan môre dorp toe.
We're going to town tomorrow.
Sy stap skool toe.
She walks to school.
The most common of all is huis toe ("homeward / to home"), which you will hear constantly:
Ek wil nou huis toe gaan.
I want to go home now.
English has no single word that does this — "homeward" is the nearest, and it is archaic in everyday speech. In Afrikaans, toe is the everyday, unmarked way to say "to (a destination)." It gets a full page at direction with toe. Note that toe takes no diacritic — it is plain toe, not to be confused with the conjunction toe ("when, in the past").
Circumpositions: wrapping the noun
A second English-less structure is the circumposition — a relationship marked by two words, one before the noun and one after, bracketing it. The classic is van ... af ("from ... onward").
Ek werk van môre af van die huis af.
From tomorrow on I'm working from home.
That sentence has two circumpositions: van môre af ("from tomorrow on") and van die huis af ("from home"). The pattern van X af clamps the noun between van and af. Others include tot ... toe ("up to / until") and om ... te with infinitives. These feel strange at first because English never splits a preposition this way, but the logic — front word opens, back word closes — is consistent. They get their own page at circumpositions.
Waar-compounds replace stranded prepositions
English happily strands a preposition at the end of a clause: "the chair I'm sitting on," "what are you talking about?" Afrikaans does not strand prepositions this way. Instead, when the object is a thing (not a person), it fuses waar- ("where") with the preposition into a single word: waarop ("on which"), waaroor ("about which"), waarmee ("with which").
Die stoel waarop ek sit, is gemaklik.
The chair I'm sitting on is comfortable.
Waaroor praat julle?
What are you talking about?
So instead of stranding op or oor at the end, Afrikaans pulls it to the front, glued to waar-. This is one of the harder habits to build because English's stranding instinct is so strong. The full set lives on waar-compounds.
Fixed phrases abound
Finally, a great many prepositional expressions are simply set phrases that you learn whole, the way you learned English "by heart" or "on time." Op pad ("on the way"), uit die bloute ("out of the blue"), in elk geval ("in any case"). Do not try to derive these from the individual words — memorise the phrase. They are gathered on fixed prepositional phrases.
Common mistakes
The errors cluster around stranding, the wrong in/on choice, and dropping the closing half of a circumposition.
❌ Die stoel wat ek op sit, is gemaklik.
Incorrect — Afrikaans does not strand 'op'; use the waarop compound.
✅ Die stoel waarop ek sit, is gemaklik.
The chair I'm sitting on is comfortable.
❌ Sy is in skool.
Incorrect — for attending school Afrikaans says 'op skool', not 'in'.
✅ Sy is op skool.
She's at school.
❌ Ek werk van die huis.
Incorrect — the circumposition needs its closing 'af': van die huis af.
✅ Ek werk van die huis af.
I'm working from home.
❌ Ons gaan na dorp.
Incorrect — destination is marked by the postposition 'toe', not a fronted 'na': dorp toe.
✅ Ons gaan dorp toe.
We're going to town.
Key takeaways
- Afrikaans prepositions trigger no case — the noun never changes shape after them.
- Many are cognate with English (in, op, onder, met, van), but the in/on/at boundaries differ — see location.
- Direction to a destination uses the postposition toe: huis toe, dorp toe (see direction with toe).
- Circumpositions like van ... af wrap the noun in two words — a structure English lacks (see circumpositions).
- Afrikaans does not strand prepositions; it uses waar-compounds like waarop, waaroor instead.
Now practice Afrikaans
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- Location: in, op, by, onder, langs, tussenA1 — The everyday Afrikaans prepositions of place — in, op, by, onder, langs, tussen, voor, agter, naby — and the one English splits that by covers in one word.
- Time Prepositions: om, op, in, voor, na, tydensA2 — Afrikaans temporal prepositions follow a tidy size ladder — om for the hour, op for days, in for months and longer — plus voor, na, tydens and sedert.
- Direction: na, toe, uit, deurA2 — How Afrikaans marks movement toward and away from a place — the distinctive postposition toe (huis toe), the preposition na, and the source markers uit and van … af.
- Circumpositions: van ... af, tot ... toeB2 — Afrikaans brackets certain nouns between a preposition in front and a particle behind — van die begin af, tot nou toe — a wrap-around frame that competitors never connect to the rest of the language.
- Pronominal Adverbs: waarmee, hiermee, daarmeeB1 — Afrikaans cannot say 'met dit' or 'oor wat' — it fuses the preposition with hier-, daar- or waar- into one solid word: daarmee, hieroor, waarvan.
- Fixed Prepositional PhrasesB1 — Set phrases like op pad, te koop, in die geheim and aan die brand, where the preposition is idiomatic, the article is often dropped, and the whole phrase must be learned as a unit.