gaan (to go) — Full Forms

gaan is one of the handful of verbs you will use in nearly every conversation, and it earns its keep twice over: it is the plain motion verb to go (I'm going to town), and it is also the future marker going to (I'm going to sleep). English has exactly the same double life — go the verb and going to the future — so the concept is familiar. The two things English speakers must unlearn are tiny but real: the perfect of gaan takes het, never is (a trap for anyone who knows Dutch or German), and motion gaan often needs a direction word like toe (to/towards).

Core forms

gaan is irregular only in how short it is. There is one present form for all persons, the perfect is het gegaan, and the future is sal gaan.

gaan as a motion verb: mind the "toe"

When gaan means physical movement, Afrikaans usually marks the destination with toe (to / towards), placed after the destination noun, not before it. This postposition is one of the most distinctive little patterns in the language.

So the destination phrase is [noun] + toe — winkel toe (to the shop), huis toe (home), skool toe (to school). English buries "to" before the noun; Afrikaans hangs toe on the end. With place names and some destinations you can also use na (na Kaapstad), but the everyday spoken pattern for common destinations is ... toe.

gaan as the "going-to" future

Just like English going to, gaan plus a bare infinitive expresses near or intended future. The main verb sits at the end of the clause in its plain (infinitive) form.

subject + gaan + … + infinitive

This is the difference that trips learners up: in ek gaan winkel toe, gaan is the main verb and winkel toe is where you are going; in ek gaan slaap, gaan is an auxiliary and slaap is the real verb. The clue is the second verb. If another verb follows, gaan is the future marker; if a destination follows, gaan is motion.

The middle sentence shows both at once: gaan marks the future, and ry (drive) is the motion verb at the end. The full machinery of the going-to future — how it compares with sal — lives on the future overview.

The perfect: het gegaan, NOT is gegaan

This is the most important warning on the page for anyone with Dutch, German or French in their background. In those languages, "to go" forms its perfect with the be-auxiliary: Dutch ik ben gegaan, German ich bin gegangen, French je suis allé. Afrikaans does not do this. The perfect of gaan is het gegaan — with het (have), like virtually every other Afrikaans verb.

Afrikaans simplified the old Germanic have/be split out of existence: nearly everything takes het. The rare survivors of the is-perfect are a tiny, learnable set covered on het vs is in the perfect — but gaan is not one of them. Burn this in: het gegaan, never is gegaan.

gaan vs sal: two ways to talk about the future

Afrikaans has two future markers, and gaan is the more concrete of the pair. gaan + infinitive expresses intention or a present trend pointing at the future — exactly like English going to. sal + infinitive is the more neutral, prediction-and-promise future — closer to English will. The difference is often subtle, but it is real.

You reach for gaan when there is already a plan or evidence in the present (dit gaan reën — the clouds are right there); you reach for sal for predictions, promises and conditionals. The full contrast, including how both interact with as (if) clauses, is on the future overview.

Set expressions with gaan

A few high-frequency phrases use gaan in ways worth memorising as units. Hoe gaan dit? (literally "how goes it?") is the standard How are you? And dit gaan goed / sleg is how you say things are going well or badly.

Here gaan is neither motion nor future; it is an idiomatic "to go/fare," and dit gaan goed is one of the first things you will say in any real conversation.

gaan + verb to mean "go and do"

Besides the going-to future, gaan combines with another verb to mean go (somewhere) and do something — the "go and fetch / go and look" sense. Here gaan keeps its motion meaning, and the second verb is the activity you go to perform.

In the perfect, this construction keeps both verbs as bare infinitives after het: ek het gaan kyk (I went and looked), not ek het gegaan kyk. The participle gegaan appears only when gaan stands alone as the full verb (ek het kerk toe gegaan). When gaan leads into another verb, it stays an infinitive even in the past.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• gaan has one present form for all persons; perfect het gegaan; future sal gaan.
• The perfect uses het, never is — resist Dutch/German/French transfer.
• As a motion verb, gaan usually takes the destination postposition toe (winkel toe, huis toe).
• As a future auxiliary, gaan
  • a bare infinitive means "going to" (ek gaan slaap) — covered fully on the future overview.
• The quick test: a verb after gaan = future; a destination after gaan = motion.