Parentheticals and Asides

A parenthetical is a little comment dropped into the middle of a sentence: Dit is, dink ek, die beste opsie ("It is, I think, the best option"). The crucial structural fact — and the one that trips up English speakers who have just learned Afrikaans word order — is that a parenthetical is syntactically transparent. It does not occupy a slot in the host clause, it does not count as the first element for the V2 rule, and therefore it does not trigger any inversion. The host sentence carries on exactly as if the insertion were not there. This page shows how to drop in asides like dink ek, glo ek and soos jy weet without accidentally scrambling the surrounding clause, and how Afrikaans punctuates them.

What a parenthetical is — and why it is "transparent"

Afrikaans is a verb-second (V2) language: in a main clause the finite verb sits in the second position, right after whatever fills the first slot (see V2 word order). The whole point of a parenthetical is that it sits outside this counting. You can lift it out and the sentence is still complete and grammatical. Because it is not part of the clause's argument structure, it never "uses up" the first slot, so the verb's position is unaffected.

Strip out dink ek and you have Dit is die beste opsie — perfectly ordered, verb is in second position. The insertion changed nothing structural; it only added a hedge. That is what "transparent" means: the host clause behaves as though the parenthetical were invisible.

Again, remove soos jy weet and you get Hy het vertrek — auxiliary het second, participle vertrek at the end, untouched. The parenthetical slotted in between subject and verb without disturbing either.

The trap: a parenthetical is NOT a fronted element

Here is the error English speakers make. They learn that fronting something to the start of an Afrikaans clause forces inversion (verb before subject): Vandag kom hy ("Today he's coming"), not Vandag hy kom. Then they treat a sentence-initial dink ek the same way and invert — but that is wrong, because dink ek is a parenthetical, not a fronted constituent.

Compare:

In the first, Ek dink is the real main clause and dit is … is its complement. In the second, dink ek is just an aside; the real clause is Dit is die beste opsie, fully intact. The difference is not stylistic decoration — it is two different syntactic structures. And note the inverted internal order of the parenthetical itself: it is dink ek (verb-subject), the fossilised reporting shape, not ek dink. The aside flips its own subject and verb precisely because it is a quotative tag, not a clause occupying a slot.

The danger zone is when the host clause itself begins with something that would invert. The parenthetical does not change that calculation:

The first slot is Môre; the verb gaan still inverts to second position over the subject dit — gaan dit — because Môre is the fronted element, not dink ek. The aside between them changes nothing. If you wrongly counted dink ek as occupying a slot, you would mangle the verb placement.

Reporting parentheticals: sê hy, vra sy, meen die minister

The most frequent type is the reporting parenthetical — a quotative tag inserted into or appended to reported speech: sê hy ("he says"), vra sy ("she asks"), het hy gesê ("he said"), meen die kenner ("the expert reckons"). These always show verb-first internal order (sê hy, never hy sê) and are set off by commas. They are the bread and butter of journalism and narrative; see also quotation and reporting.

In every case the quoted clause keeps its own word order as a complete unit, and the tag is grafted on without disturbing it. Die plan … sal baie kos is intact; sê hy is parenthetical.

Common stance and hedging parentheticals

A small set of these asides is extremely common in both speech and writing, used to signal the speaker's stance — certainty, source, solidarity. Worth knowing as ready-made units (more on the function at stance and hedging):

Punctuation: commas and dashes

Afrikaans punctuates parentheticals the way English does. The two ordinary options:

• Paired commas — for a smooth, integrated aside: Dit is, dink ek, reg.
• Paired dashes (em-dashes) — for a sharper, more emphatic interruption: Sy het — en dit verbaas my — ja gesê ("She said yes — and this surprises me").

Dashes signal a heavier break (often a fuller clause, even an exclamation) inside the host sentence; commas signal a lighter one. Brackets/round parentheses also exist for the most detached, aside-y material, but commas and dashes are the everyday choices. Whichever you pick, the marks come in a pair that fences the aside off on both sides — and, once more, the host clause's word order is unaffected by what sits inside that fence.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• A parenthetical is an insertion you can lift out and still have a complete sentence; dink ek, soos jy weet, sê hy.
• It is syntactically transparent: it does not count for V2, so it never triggers inversion and never changes the host clause's word order.
• Do not treat a sentence-initial or mid-clause aside like a fronted element — the verb's position is decided by the real clause, ignoring the aside.
• Reporting parentheticals are verb-first: sê hy, vra sy, meen die minister — never hy sê inside the tag.
• Punctuate with a matched pair of marks — commas for a light aside, dashes for an emphatic interruption.