Dialogue: Buying Clothes (A2)

Buying clothes is a perfect A2 workout: in a single short conversation you naturally hit colour adjectives, sizes, the demonstratives hierdie (this) and daardie (that), the verb pas (to fit / to suit), and prices with a decimal comma. Below is a short original dialogue — composed for this page — between a customer and a shop assistant. After the text, each grammar point is annotated so you can see exactly what is doing the work and where an English speaker's instincts go astray.

The dialogue

Lize is looking for a jacket. Themba works at the clothing shop.

Line-by-line commentary

Opening the transaction: Ek soek 'n warm baadjie

Ek soek... ("I'm looking for...") is the standard opener for what you want. Note there is no separate continuous tense — ek soek covers both "I look for" and "I'm looking for". The phrase vir die winter ("for the winter") uses vir for purpose, exactly like English "for".

Attributive colour and quality adjectives

When an adjective sits before the noun (attributive position), Afrikaans sometimes adds an -e ending and sometimes leaves it bare — and this is where colours behave nicely. Most basic colour words stay bare before the noun: blou baadjie (blue jacket), swart broek (black trousers), rooi rok (red dress). They do not take -e.

Compare the quality adjective warm in 'n warm baadjie — also bare here. The -e ending does appear on many other adjectives ('n mooie dag alongside 'n mooi dag), but the everyday colour words blou, rooi, swart, geel, bruin, pienk stay uninflected, which is a relief. The clear exception is groen → groene is possible but uncommon; in normal speech groen baadjie stays bare too. Compound colours like donkergroen (dark green) are written as one word.

Demonstratives: hierdie versus daardie

hierdie = "this / these" (near), daardie = "that / those" (far). The crucial difference from English: they do not change for singular or plural. hierdie baadjie (this jacket) and hierdie baadjies (these jackets) use the same hierdie. English forces this/these and that/those; Afrikaans gives you one word each.

The word een here is "one" standing in for the noun — hierdie een (this one), daardie groen een (that green one). It works just like English "one" after a demonstrative.

The star verb: pas

pas is the workhorse of clothes shopping, and it does two related jobs.

First, pas = "to fit" (the right size): Dit pas goed — it fits well.

Second, pas (by) = "to go with / to match", and pas can also mean "to suit": Pas dit by 'n swart broek? (Does it go with black trousers?), Dit pas perfek (It suits perfectly). The preposition by introduces what it matches.

And to try a garment on, the separable verb is aanpas ("to fit on / try on"). In Kan ek dit aanpas? the parts stay together after kan; in a plain statement they split (Ek pas dit aan).

Asking the size and the price

Watter grootte dra u? — "What size do you wear?" The question word watter ("which/what") asks about a choice, and the verb dra ("to wear / to carry") jumps in front of the subject u in this wh-question. Note u is the polite "you", natural from a shop assistant to a customer.

For the price, Wat kos dit? ("What does it cost?") is the set question, and op uitverkoping means "on sale".

Prices and the decimal comma

This is a small but important orthographic point: Afrikaans uses a comma as the decimal separator, not a point. So "R299.99" is written R299,99 — twee honderd nege-en-negentig rand nege-en-negentig. The currency is the South African rand, written R before the amount. A thousands separator, when used, is a space or a point, the opposite of English.

Closing: Dan vat ek die groen een

Dan vat ek... ("Then I'll take...") — note the casual vat for "take", the natural shop word (rather than the formal neem). Because the sentence starts with Dan, the verb vat comes second and the subject ek follows — the verb-second pattern in action. The assistant's Ek slaan dit solank op uses the separable verb opslaan (to ring up / total up), with solank meaning "in the meantime".

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• Ek soek... opens a request; there's no separate "-ing" form, so it means both "I look for" and "I'm looking for".
• Common colour words (blou, swart, rooi, groen) stay bare before the noun — don't add -e.
• Demonstratives hierdie (this/these) and daardie (that/those) are invariant for number.
• Learn the three senses of pas: dit pas (fits), pas by (goes with), aanpas (try on).
• Prices use a decimal comma: R299,99, with R before the amount.
• See the shop dialogue and the colour adjectives and demonstratives pages for the systems behind these lines.