The 60 Most Common Verbs in Use | Afrikaans Grammar

This page is the single most efficient thing you can study at A2, and the reason is a quirk of Afrikaans grammar. The present tense does not change for person or number — ek werk, jy werk, hy werk, ons werk all use the same bare form. So a frequency reference does not need a conjugation table per verb; it needs one row per verb. Where Spanish or French would spend a whole page conjugating trabajar or travailler, Afrikaans fits sixty verbs into the same space, and learning the form once gives you every person at once.

Why this list is so powerful

In English you say I go, he goes — even English bothers to add an -s. Afrikaans drops even that. The infinitive, the present, and the form after a modal are all identical: gaan is gaan in ek gaan, sy gaan, ons gaan, hulle gaan, and ek wil gaan. The only place a verb visibly changes shape is the perfect, formed with the auxiliary het plus a past participle that usually adds ge-: ek het gegaan (I went / have gone). Afrikaans has essentially no simple past tense; the perfect with het does the work of both English "I went" and "I have gone". For the full mechanics see the past tense overview and present tense.

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Learn each verb in two shapes only: the bare form (covers present, infinitive, and the form after modals) and the perfect (het ge-...). That is the entire "conjugation" of an Afrikaans verb. Everything else is word order.

So the table below is not a shortcut that hides detail — it genuinely contains a verb's whole inflectional life. A handful of high-frequency verbs are irregular in the perfect (their participle is not just ge- + bare form), and those are the rows worth real attention.

The top tier: the verbs you cannot avoid

Infinitive	Meaning	Perfect	Example
wees	to be	was / het gewees	Ek is moeg. / Ek was moeg.
hê	to have	het gehad	Sy het twee katte.
gaan	to go	het gegaan	Ons gaan môre dorp toe.
kom	to come	het gekom	Kom jy saam?
doen	to do	het gedoen	Wat doen jy?
maak	to make / do	het gemaak	Hy maak koffie.
sê	to say	het gesê	Wat het jy gesê?
sien	to see	het gesien	Ek sien jou môre.
weet	to know (a fact)	het geweet	Ek weet nie.
kan	can / be able	kon	Kan jy my help?
wil	to want	wou	Ek wil huis toe gaan.
moet	must / have to	moes	Jy moet rus.
gee	to give	het gegee	Gee my die sout, asseblief.
neem	to take	het geneem	Neem die eerste afdraai.
kry	to get / receive	het gekry	Ek het 'n brief gekry.
loop	to walk / go	het geloop	Ons loop strand toe.
staan	to stand	het gestaan	Hy staan by die deur.
sit	to sit	het gesit	Sit hier by my.
lê	to lie (down)	het gelê	Die hond lê op die mat.
eet	to eat	het geëet	Ons eet om sewe-uur.
drink	to drink	het gedrink	Drink jy tee of koffie?
praat	to speak / talk	het gepraat	Ons het lank gepraat.
werk	to work	het gewerk	Sy werk in 'n bank.
woon	to live / reside	het gewoon	Ek woon in Pretoria.
speel	to play	het gespeel	Die kinders speel buite.
lees	to read	het gelees	Ek lees elke aand.
skryf / skrywe	to write	het geskryf / geskrywe	Hy skryf vir sy ma.
koop	to buy	het gekoop	Ons koop brood by die winkel.
betaal	to pay	het betaal	Wie het betaal?
help	to help	het gehelp	Kan ek jou help?
vra	to ask	het gevra	Sy het my naam gevra.
antwoord	to answer	het geantwoord	Hy het nie geantwoord nie.
dink	to think	het gedink	Ek dink jy is reg.
voel	to feel	het gevoel	Ek voel vandag beter.
hoor	to hear	het gehoor	Ek hoor jou nie goed nie.
hou van	to like	het gehou van	Ek hou van koffie.
begin	to begin	het begin	Die film begin om agt-uur.
ophou	to stop / cease	het opgehou	Hou op met daardie geraas!
bly	to stay / remain	het gebly	Bly nog 'n bietjie.
word	to become	het geword	Dit word donker.

That is the core. The rest of this page draws out the rows that surprise English speakers, because the table tells you what a verb is but not how it behaves.

The irregular five: wees, hê, kan, wil, moet

Five of the highest-frequency verbs do not behave like the het ge-... template, and they are worth memorising as a block.

Wees (to be) is the most irregular word in the language. Its present is is (no separate forms for person), its simple past is was, and its perfect het gewees is real but rarer in speech.

Sy is 'n dokter, maar haar ma was 'n onderwyser.

She is a doctor, but her mother was a teacher.

Dit was 'n lang dag.

It was a long day.

Hê (to have) keeps the circumflex on its infinitive and contracts in the present to het: ek het, jy het, ons het — the very same word as the perfect auxiliary. Its past participle is the irregular gehad.

Ek het nie genoeg tyd gehad nie.

I didn't have enough time.

Kan, wil, moet are modals. They keep a true simple past — kon, wou, moes — which is one of the few places in Afrikaans where a one-word past survives instead of the het-perfect. After a modal, the main verb stays in its bare form at the end of the clause.

Ek wou jou bel, maar ek kon nie my foon kry nie.

I wanted to call you, but I couldn't find my phone.

Ons moes vroeg opstaan om die trein te haal.

We had to get up early to catch the train.

The full modal picture, including sal, mag, and sou, is on the modals summary.

Verbs that demand a preposition: hou van

The list hides a trap in plain sight: hou van is not one word for "like" — it is hou (hold) plus the fixed preposition van. You cannot say ek hou koffie; the van is obligatory and the thing you like follows it.

My kinders hou van die see.

My children love the sea.

Ek hou nie van koue koffie nie.

I don't like cold coffee.

In the perfect, the van clings to the end with its object: Ek het altyd van haar gehou. A handful of other everyday verbs carry a built-in preposition this way — see verb + preposition collocations.

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Hou van is the highest-frequency "verb + preposition" pair in Afrikaans. Never drop the van: ek hou van..., not ek hou.... Treat the two words as a single lexical unit you store together.

Ophou: a verb that splits in two

Ophou (to stop, to cease) is a separable verb: in a main clause the prefix op detaches and jumps to the end. So the dictionary form is ophou, but you say hou op.

Die reën het eindelik opgehou.

The rain finally stopped.

Hou op huil — alles sal regkom.

Stop crying — everything will be fine.

Notice the perfect opgehou: the ge- slots between the prefix and the stem. This is true of every separable verb, and it is a different beast from the inseparable betaal (paid → betaal, no ge- at all). Both patterns appear in the table above.

Orthography watch

Three rows carry the spelling details that learners most often drop:

lê (to lie down) has a circumflex — without it, le is not a word. So does the perfect gelê.
eet (to eat) becomes geëet in the perfect: the diaeresis on the second e signals that the two e's belong to separate syllables (ge-ëet), not a long vowel. Likewise geëindig and friends.
hê (to have) keeps its circumflex in the infinitive but loses it in the present het.

Ons het al geëet, dankie.

We've already eaten, thanks.

Common mistakes

❌ Ek hou koffie.

Incorrect — hou van requires the preposition van.

✅ Ek hou van koffie.

I like coffee.

❌ Hy goes elke dag werk toe.

Incorrect — Afrikaans verbs never add an -s for 'he/she'.

✅ Hy gaan elke dag werk toe.

He goes to work every day.

❌ Ek het betaal vir die ete gisteraand.

Incorrect word order — the participle 'betaal' must close the clause.

✅ Ek het gisteraand vir die ete betaal.

I paid for the meal last night.

❌ Ek het gehet 'n goeie dag.

Incorrect — the participle of hê is the irregular gehad, not 'gehet'.

✅ Ek het 'n goeie dag gehad.

I had a good day.

❌ Ons het al geeet.

Incorrect — 'eaten' needs the diaeresis: geëet.

✅ Ons het al geëet.

We've already eaten.

Key takeaways

The Afrikaans present is invariant, so each verb needs only two stored shapes: the bare form and the perfect (het ge-...).
Wees (is/was), hê (het/gehad), and the modals kan/wil/moet (kon/wou/moes) are the irregulars worth memorising as a block.
Hou van carries an obligatory preposition; never drop the van.
Ophou splits (hou op) and inserts ge- in the middle (opgehou); betaal takes no ge- at all.
Mind the diacritics: lê / gelê (circumflex) and eet → geëet (diaeresis).

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