There is a small structural fact about Afrikaans that trips up almost every English speaker, and it is not optional politeness or style — it is a hard rule of the grammar. When the object of a preposition is the non-personal pronoun dit ("it") or wat ("which/what"), Afrikaans refuses to keep the preposition and the pronoun as two separate words. You cannot say met dit or oor wat. Instead the two collapse into a single solid word: daarmee ("with it/that"), waaroor ("about which"). These fused words are called pronominal adverbs, and once you see the system behind them, dozens of forms fall out of one simple template.
The core rule: no preposition + dit / wat
In English you happily say "with it," "about it," "from that," "in which." The preposition and the pronoun stay apart. Afrikaans does not allow this for the neuter pronouns. The pronoun is replaced by a stem — hier-, daar-, or waar- — and the preposition is welded onto the end:
| English | Wrong (English-style) | Afrikaans |
|---|---|---|
| with it / with that | daarmee | |
| with this | hiermee | |
| about which | waaroor | |
| of / from it | daarvan | |
| in which | waarin |
The one exception worth flagging early: this only applies to non-personal reference. When the object is a person, you keep the ordinary pronoun — met hom ("with him"), oor haar ("about her"). The fusion is reserved for things, ideas and abstractions, never people. People get covered separately under prepositions with pronouns.
Three stems: hier-, daar-, waar-
The stem you pick encodes what English would express with the pronoun. There are exactly three, and they line up neatly with three English meanings:
| Stem | Replaces | Function | Rough English |
|---|---|---|---|
| hier- | this | demonstrative (near) | "with this", "about this" |
| daar- | it / that | demonstrative (far / neutral) | "with it", "about that" |
| waar- | which / what | interrogative / relative | "with which", "about what" |
So hier- and daar- are pointing words ("this/that"), while waar- is the question-and-relative word ("which/what"). Note that daar- is the workhorse: it does duty both for "it" and for the neutral "that," so it is by far the most common of the three in speech.
Ek stem daarmee saam.
I agree with that.
Wat bedoel jy daarmee?
What do you mean by that?
Hiermee stuur ek die brief aan.
With this I am sending the letter (i.e. herewith I enclose the letter).
Notice in the first example that daarmee is fixed onto the verb phrase stem ... saam ("agree with"). The preposition the verb governs is met ("agree with something"), and because the object is "that," met surfaces as the -mee tail of daarmee. This is the same logic running through every example: find the preposition the verb or phrase needs, then attach it to the right stem.
The preposition tail: -mee, -van, -oor, -in...
When the preposition joins the stem it sometimes changes shape slightly. The big one is met, which becomes -mee (so "with it" is daar-mee, never daarmet). The others mostly attach unchanged. Here is the practical inventory you will actually use:
| Preposition |
|
| Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| met → -mee | daarmee | waarmee | with it / with which |
| van | daarvan | waarvan | of, from it / of which |
| oor | daaroor | waaroor | about, over it / about which |
| in | daarin | waarin | in it / in which |
| op | daarop | waarop | on it / on which |
| aan | daaraan | waaraan | to, on it / to which |
| vir | daarvoor | waarvoor | for it / for which |
| deur | daardeur | waardeur | through, by it / through which |
| by | daarby | waarby | at, with it / whereby |
A spelling note worth catching: vir ("for") attaches as -voor, so "for it" is daarvoor and "for which" is waarvoor — not daarvir. This is a genuine irregularity; the rest are predictable.
Sy het hard gewerk en sy is trots daarop.
She worked hard and she is proud of it.
Dis 'n probleem waarvoor daar geen maklike oplossing is nie.
It's a problem for which there is no easy solution.
Hy het 'n storie vertel waaroor almal gelag het.
He told a story that everyone laughed about.
hier- / daar- in statements; waar- joining clauses
The split is functional. hier- and daar- point at things and stand on their own inside a clause, exactly where English would use "with it / about this / from that":
Ek het 'n nuwe rugsak gekry en ek is baie bly daarmee.
I got a new backpack and I'm very happy with it.
Moenie daaraan raak nie — dit is warm.
Don't touch it — it's hot.
waar- forms, by contrast, typically open a relative clause that describes the noun before them. Here waar- stands in for English "which" plus its preposition:
Die saak waaroor ons praat, is baie ernstig.
The matter that we are talking about is very serious.
Die mes waarmee ek die brood gesny het, is stomp.
The knife I cut the bread with is blunt.
Dit is die rede waarom ek laat is.
That is the reason why I am late.
That last form, waarom, has frozen into the everyday word for "why" — literally "for which / about which" — and you will meet it constantly. In a question it stands first: Waarom huil jy? ("Why are you crying?").
They are single solid words
Spell them as one word. daarmee, waaroor, hiervan are never written with a space or a hyphen, and they take no diacritics. A learner who writes daar mee or waar oor has effectively committed a spelling error. In speech the stress falls on the preposition tail: daar-MEE, waar-OOR.
For the question-word side of this system — Waarmee skryf jy? ("What do you write with?") and the way Afrikaans avoids stranding prepositions at the end — see prepositional questions and preposition stranding and how Afrikaans avoids it. For the relative pronoun wat on its own, see the relative wat.
Common mistakes
❌ Ek stem saam met dit.
Incorrect — you can't keep 'met' + 'dit' apart; they must fuse.
✅ Ek stem daarmee saam.
I agree with that.
❌ die saak oor wat ons praat
Incorrect — 'oor wat' is ungrammatical; it must become waaroor.
✅ die saak waaroor ons praat
the matter that we are talking about
❌ Hy is trots van dit.
Incorrect — 'van dit' must fuse, and 'trots' takes op, not van.
✅ Hy is trots daarop.
He is proud of it.
❌ Ek is bly daarvir.
Incorrect — vir attaches as -voor, not -vir.
✅ Ek is bly daarvoor.
I am glad about it / for it.
❌ daar mee / waar oor
Incorrect — these are single solid words, never written with a space.
✅ daarmee / waaroor
with it / about which
Key takeaways
- Afrikaans forbids preposition + dit/wat. The pronoun fuses with the preposition into one solid word — this is a structural rule, not a style choice.
- Three stems: hier- ("this"), daar- ("it / that"), waar- ("which / what"). daar- is the most common.
- The preposition attaches as a tail; watch the two shape-changers: met → -mee and vir → -voor (so daarmee, daarvoor).
- hier-/daar- forms stand inside a clause like English "with it / about this"; waar- forms open relative clauses ("the knife with which...").
- Only for non-people. For persons you keep the ordinary pronoun — met hom, oor haar — see prepositions with pronouns.
Now practice Afrikaans
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- Prepositional Questions: waarmee, waarvan, met wieB1 — How to ask 'with what?', 'about what?', 'for whom?' in Afrikaans — the waar-compounds for things and preposition + wie for people, with no English-style stranding.
- Relative Pronouns: wat, wie, waar-B1 — Afrikaans collapses English who/which/that into the single all-purpose relative pronoun wat — for people and things alike — and handles prepositional relatives with met wie for people and solid waar-compounds for things.
- The Pronoun dit: it, this, thatA2 — Afrikaans dit is the all-purpose 'it' — subject and object of things, a dummy subject in weather and time phrases, a pointer back to whole ideas, and the source of the contraction dis.
- Avoiding Preposition StrandingB2 — Afrikaans never strands a preposition the way English does — it pied-pipes the preposition with wie for people (met wie ek praat) and fuses it into a solid waar-compound for things (waarmee ek skryf).
- Prepositions with PronounsA2 — Prepositions take object pronouns (vir my, met hom, by ons) — but with the inanimate dit you must switch to a daar-compound (daarmee, not 'met dit'). The person/thing split, plus vir as the all-purpose dative marker.