bring ("to bring") and stuur ("to send") are a natural pair: both move something from one place to another, the difference being only direction — bring moves it towards the speaker or hearer, stuur moves it away. Both are three-place verbs: there is a thing being moved and usually a person receiving it. The one structural point worth mastering is how Afrikaans marks that receiver — with the little word vir — because English speakers tend to leave it out. This page gives you the forms and the recipient pattern; for the full grammar of the vir-recipient and double-object clauses, see vir as a dative marker and double objects and datives.
The basic forms
bring is the one to watch: its participle is het gebring, which looks irregular but is in fact a perfectly regular het … ge- form built on the stem bring (the stem ends in -ing, so gebring is exactly what the rules predict — there is no ge-bringd or vowel change). stuur is wholly regular: het gestuur.
| Form | bring (bring) | stuur (send) |
|---|---|---|
| Present | bring | stuur |
| Perfect (past) | het gebring | het gestuur |
| Future | sal bring | sal stuur |
| Infinitive | (om te) bring | (om te) stuur |
| Imperative | bring! | stuur! |
Bring asseblief 'n bottel wyn saam.
Please bring a bottle of wine along.
Ek het die pakkie gister gestuur.
I sent the parcel yesterday.
Wie het hierdie blomme gebring?
Who brought these flowers?
The recipient: bring/stuur something for someone — with vir
Here is the core pattern. When you bring or send something to/for a person, that person is marked with vir. So you don't bring iemand iets the way English says "bring someone something"; you bring iets vir iemand — bring something for someone.
Bring vir my 'n glas water, asseblief.
Bring me a glass of water, please.
Sy het 'n geskenk vir die baba gebring.
She brought a present for the baby.
Stuur die foto's vir my as jy kan.
Send me the photos if you can.
Hy stuur elke maand geld vir sy familie.
He sends money to his family every month.
The mistake English speakers make is dropping the vir — saying stuur my die foto's on the model of "send me the photos". That bare-recipient pattern is normal English but not normal Afrikaans: the recipient wants its vir. (Word order is flexible — bring vir my 'n glas water and bring 'n glas water vir my are both fine — but the vir itself is not optional in standard usage.)
saambring — bring along
bring has a very common separable partner: saambring, "to bring along/with you". As a separable verb its particle saam splits off in a main clause and goes to the end (ek bring my suster saam), while the participle wraps the ge- inside (saamgebring).
Kan ek 'n vriend saambring na die partytjie?
Can I bring a friend along to the party?
Ek bring my suster saam, as dit reg is.
I'm bringing my sister along, if that's okay.
Het julle genoeg kos saamgebring?
Did you bring enough food along?
The sibling saamstuur ("send along, send with") works the same way: ek stuur die rekening saam ("I'm sending the invoice along with it"). And note that saam on its own is the everyday word for "together/along", so once you know it as a particle, the whole family opens up.
The idiom dit bring mee — "it entails"
Finally, an idiom worth knowing because it sounds advanced and is genuinely common in writing and careful speech: dit bring mee (dat) — "it brings with it (that)", i.e. "it entails / it leads to". Here mee is the particle and bring keeps its literal shape, but the whole expression has become figurative: a situation brings something with it as a consequence.
Die nuwe wet bring mee dat almal nou moet registreer.
The new law entails that everyone now has to register.
Hierdie pos bring baie verantwoordelikheid mee.
This job carries a lot of responsibility with it.
Vinnige groei bring sy eie probleme mee.
Rapid growth brings its own problems with it.
The verb here is the separable meebring (participle het meegebring), and you will mostly meet it in this consequence sense rather than literally. It is a notch more formal than everyday speech — at home in news, contracts, and reasoned argument — but every educated speaker recognises it.
Common mistakes
❌ Stuur my die dokument.
Incorrect — the recipient needs vir in standard Afrikaans.
✅ Stuur die dokument vir my.
Send me the document.
❌ Bring my 'n bietjie water.
Incorrect — say bring vir my, with the recipient marked by vir.
✅ Bring vir my 'n bietjie water.
Bring me a little water.
❌ Hy het die blomme gebringd.
Incorrect — the regular participle is gebring, with no added -d.
✅ Hy het die blomme gebring.
He brought the flowers.
❌ Kan ek 'n vriend bring saam?
Wrong order — the separable particle saam goes to the clause end: bring … saam.
✅ Kan ek 'n vriend saambring?
Can I bring a friend along?
❌ Die wet bring mee nie dat almal registreer nie.
Misplaced negation — keep the clause whole: the new law simply doesn't entail it.
✅ Die wet bring nie mee dat almal moet registreer nie.
The law doesn't entail that everyone must register.
Key takeaways
- Forms: bring / het gebring / sal bring and stuur / het gestuur / sal stuur — gebring looks irregular but follows the rule.
- Mark the recipient with vir: stuur die foto's vir my, not stuur my die foto's.
- saambring = bring along (separable: bring … saam; participle saamgebring); likewise saamstuur.
- The idiom dit bring mee (dat) = "it entails / brings with it"; verb meebring (het meegebring), more formal register.
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- 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).
- Double Objects and Dative AlternationB2 — Ditransitive verbs like gee let you say both 'gee my die boek' and 'gee die boek vir my' — the same meaning, two orders, with a soft pull toward fronting pronoun recipients.