Descriptive Passage: A Place (Original, B1)

Description is the best possible drill for one grammar point: the attributive -e. The moment you start describing a place, you put adjective after adjective in front of a noun — a wide street, an old church, a dusty road — and every one of them has to be inflected correctly. This page presents a short original passage (composed for this guide, not quoted from any source) about a small town in the Karoo, then takes it apart to show four things working together: the attributive -e, relative clauses with wat, prepositions of place, and the existential daar is ("there is"). Read the whole passage first, then follow the annotations.

The passage

Die dorpie lê in 'n breë, droë vallei tussen twee lae bergreekse. Daar is net een lang straat, met ou kameeldoringbome wat aan weerskante skaduwee gooi. Aan die einde van die straat staan 'n wit kerk met 'n hoë toring wat 'n mens van ver af kan sien. Voor die kerk is daar 'n stil plein waar oumense in die middag op groen bankies sit. Agter die winkels loop 'n stowwerige pad wat na die plase toe lei. In die warm somer is die lug droog en die berge bruin, maar in die kort winter word alles groen. Langs die rivier, wat net ná die reën vol water is, groei hoë riete en ou wilgerbome. Dit is 'n rustige plek waar niks haastig gebeur nie, en waar elke vreemde gesig dadelik opgemerk word.

Translation: The little town lies in a wide, dry valley between two low mountain ranges. There is only one long street, with old camel-thorn trees that cast shade on both sides. At the end of the street stands a white church with a tall tower that you can see from far off. In front of the church there is a quiet square where old people sit on green benches in the afternoon. Behind the shops runs a dusty road that leads to the farms. In the hot summer the air is dry and the mountains brown, but in the short winter everything turns green. Along the river, which is full of water just after the rain, grow tall reeds and old willow trees. It is a peaceful place where nothing happens in a hurry, and where every unfamiliar face is noticed at once.

The attributive -e across the passage

Count the adjectives sitting in front of a noun, and you have a near-complete tour of the attributive ending. The rule, in full at the attributive -e, is that most adjectives add -e when they stand before the noun they describe, and stay bare after a linking verb. Watch the passage obey it:

Both breë (from breed, "wide") and droë (from droog, "dry") take the -e because they sit before vallei. Notice the diaeresis: breed loses its d and droog loses its g before the ending, and the two vowels that meet are split by a diaeresis so they are read separately — breë, droë. This is exactly the spelling trap the diaeresis exists to solve.

lae is laag ("low") plus -e, with the g gone and the vowels separated by the diaeresis again — laag → lae. The same family as hoog → hoë.

Here is the honest complication. ou ("old") and wit ("white") do not take -e — ou is one of a small set of invariable adjectives, and short colour/material words like wit often stay bare. But stowwerige ("dusty") does inflect (stowwerig → stowwerige). So the passage shows both groups side by side: most adjectives add -e, a handful never do. There is no shortcut for the exceptions — ou, wit, lekker, mooi among them — you simply learn which ones resist the ending.

One more diaeresis case: hoë (hoog → drop the g, split the vowels). Put these inflected forms next to their predicative twins from later in the passage and the contrast is total:

After the verb is, the adjectives go bare: droog, bruin — no -e — because they are predicative, standing after the linking verb rather than before a noun. Compare droë vallei (before the noun, inflected) with die lug is droog (after the verb, bare). The single adjective droog changes shape depending only on where it sits.

Relative clauses pin down which one

Good description does not just pile up adjectives; it adds relative clauses to specify exactly which thing is meant. The passage uses wat ("that/which") four times, and each clause sends its verb to the end, as every subordinate clause does (see relative clause word order).

The verb gooi ("throw, cast") lands at the end of the wat-clause, after its object skaduwee.

Here the clause ends on kan sien — the modal kan and the infinitive sien both pushed to the back. English keeps "can see" early; Afrikaans sends the whole verb cluster last.

Again the verb lei ("leads") closes the clause. Notice the relative clause is doing what description needs: not any road, but the one that leads to the farms.

Prepositions of place build the spatial frame

A description is a map in words, and the map is drawn with prepositions of place. The passage moves the reader's eye through the town with them: in (in), tussen (between), aan die einde van (at the end of), voor (in front of), agter (behind), langs (alongside), na ... toe (towards).

Two things to notice. First, na ... toe wraps around its noun — na die plase toe — a circumposition where English uses a single "to." Second, when a place phrase is fronted (Agter die winkels..., Langs die rivier...), the verb inverts to second position: Agter die winkels *loop 'n pad*, verb before subject. That V2 inversion is what lets description flow from one location to the next.

The existential daar is — "there is / there are"

To say a place contains something, Afrikaans uses daar is ("there is / there are"), exactly parallel to English. It is how you introduce new things into the scene.

In the second example the place phrase is fronted, so the order flips to is daar — verb before daar — which is the normal consequence of putting something other than the subject first. The bare form Daar is... and the inverted ...is daar... are the same construction in two word orders.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• Description is the natural drill for the attributive -e: every adjective placed before a noun (breë, droë, lae, hoë, stowwerige) takes the ending; after a linking verb it stays bare (droog, bruin) — see the attributive -e.
• A few adjectives never inflect (ou, wit), so the passage shows both groups together; the exceptions must simply be learned.
• Adjectives ending in -g or -d lose that consonant and take a diaeresis before -e: droog → droë, hoog → hoë, laag → lae, breed → breë.
• Relative clauses with wat specify which thing is meant and send their verb (or verb cluster) to the end — see relative clause word order.
• Prepositions of place build the spatial frame, and a fronted place phrase triggers V2 inversion (Agter die winkels loop...).
• The existential daar is ("there is / there are") introduces new things into the scene, inverting to ...is daar... when something is fronted.