Afrikaans has a small, fixed set of core prepositions, and this page lays the whole inventory out in one table so you can see it at a glance before you study any of them in detail. The good news up front: Afrikaans prepositions are invariant. Unlike German or Latin, they never trigger a case ending — the noun after in, op, or met looks exactly the same as it would anywhere else. The work is entirely in choosing the right preposition, and that is where English will quietly mislead you, because three of the most common words (by, toe, vir) do not mean what an English eye expects.
The core inventory
Read this table as an orientation map, not a list to memorise cold. The detailed pages — location, direction with toe, time, vir as a dative marker — unpack each cluster. Here you just want to register what exists and where the traps are.
| Preposition | Core sense | Model phrase | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| in | in / inside | in die huis | in the house |
| op | on / on top of | op die tafel | on the table |
| by | at / with (a place or person) | by die werk | at work |
| onder | under / among | onder die bed | under the bed |
| oor | over / about | oor die brug | over the bridge |
| voor | in front of / before | voor die deur | in front of the door |
| agter | behind | agter die huis | behind the house |
| langs | next to / beside | langs die pad | next to the road |
| tussen | between / among | tussen ons twee | between the two of us |
| na | to / towards (spatial) | na die dokter | to the doctor |
| toe | to (motion) — comes after the noun | huis toe | homeward / to home |
| van | from / of | van Kaapstad | from Cape Town |
| vir | for / to (recipient) | vir my ma | for / to my mother |
| met | with | met die trein | by train (lit. with the train) |
| sonder | without | sonder geld | without money |
| deur | through / by (agent) | deur die deur | through the door |
| om | around / at (a time) | om die tafel | around the table |
| tot | until / up to | tot môre | until tomorrow |
Die kos is in die yskas, en die borde staan op die tafel.
The food is in the fridge, and the plates are on the table.
Ons stap deur die park, oor die brug en tot by die rivier.
We walk through the park, over the bridge and right up to the river.
One spelling note on na: unaccented na is the spatial "to / towards" in the table above. The temporal "after" is a separate word, written ná with an acute accent — ná die werk ("after work"), die dag ná Kersfees ("the day after Christmas"). The accent is not decorative; it is the only thing that tells the two apart on the page.
The three false friends you must internalise now
Most of the table maps cleanly onto English. Three entries do not, and they are exactly the high-frequency words you will reach for daily. Learning to distrust your English instinct here is the single most valuable thing this page can give you.
by — "at", not "by"
This is the cruellest trap because the spelling is identical to English by. But Afrikaans by means at — at a place, at a person's, in someone's company. It almost never means English "by" (for which you use deur for agents, langs for "beside", or teen for deadlines).
Sy is by die werk tot vyfuur.
She is at work until five o'clock.
Kom kuier vanaand by ons.
Come visit us this evening (lit. at us).
Ek het die boek by Pieter gelos.
I left the book at Pieter's.
toe — a postposition for motion
toe means "to" in the sense of motion toward a destination, but it does something no English preposition does: it sits after the noun, not before it. Huis toe is "homeward", werk toe is "to work", see toe is "to the sea". It frames the noun from the right-hand side. (When the destination is a person or an institution you often pair it with na: na die dokter toe, with na before and toe after.)
Ek gaan nou huis toe — dit is laat.
I'm going home now — it's late.
Hulle ry strand toe vir die naweek.
They're driving to the beach for the weekend.
vir — "for", and also the recipient marker
vir means "for", which feels safe. But it has a second job with no English parallel: it marks the recipient of a verb of giving, telling, or showing, where English would use a plain object or "to". Ek gee vir jou die boek — "I give you the book". English never puts a preposition before "you" here; Afrikaans frequently does.
Ek het 'n geskenk vir my ma gekoop.
I bought a present for my mother.
Sê vir hom ek kom môre.
Tell him I'm coming tomorrow.
Why there is no case to worry about
If you have studied German, you spent weeks learning which prepositions take the accusative and which take the dative. Afrikaans swept all of that away. A noun never changes shape after a preposition, and a pronoun only switches to its object form (my, jou, hom, haar, ons, hulle) — the same form it would take as any object. There is nothing extra to learn.
Gee dit vir my, nie vir hom nie.
Give it to me, not to him.
Sy sit tussen ons twee.
She is sitting between the two of us.
This is genuinely simpler than English, which forces "between you and me" but tempts speakers into "between you and I". Afrikaans has one object form and that is the end of it.
Common mistakes
❌ Ek wag by die bus om agtuur.
Incorrect if you mean 'by the bus' as in 'next to' — by means 'at'.
✅ Ek wag langs die bus om agtuur.
I'm waiting next to the bus at eight o'clock.
❌ Ons gaan toe die see.
Incorrect — toe is a postposition; it follows the noun.
✅ Ons gaan see toe.
We're going to the sea.
❌ Ek gee jou die boek vir.
Incorrect — vir goes before the recipient, not at the end.
✅ Ek gee die boek vir jou.
I give the book to you.
❌ Die brief is geskryf by Anna.
Incorrect — the agent 'by Anna' uses deur, not by.
✅ Die brief is deur Anna geskryf.
The letter was written by Anna.
Key takeaways
- Afrikaans prepositions are invariant — no case, no agreement; the noun never changes after them.
- The core set is small and mostly maps onto English, so it pays to focus on the exceptions.
- by means "at" (not English "by"); toe is a postposition meaning "to" that follows the noun; vir means "for" but also marks recipients.
- For "by" in the English sense, use deur (agent), langs (beside), or teen (deadline).
- This table is your map — dig into location, direction with toe, and vir as a dative marker next.
Now practice Afrikaans
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- Afrikaans Prepositions: OverviewA1 — A map of the Afrikaans preposition system — invariant little words, many cognate with English, plus the destination postposition 'toe' and circumpositions English lacks.
- 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.
- 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.
- vir as the Indirect-Object MarkerB1 — How vir marks the recipient or beneficiary of an action (gee dit vir my), and the distinctively Afrikaans habit of using vir to mark personal objects (ek ken vir hom).
- 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.