Gee ("to give") is one of the first verbs you will reach for in real conversation — giving directions, handing things over, giving someone a chance. It is morphologically gentle (no irregular surprises) but syntactically interesting, because giving always involves three players: a giver, a thing given, and a recipient. How Afrikaans arranges those last two — and where the little word vir comes in — is the heart of this page.
The forms
Gee is regular. The present and the infinitive are identical (gee), the perfect takes the prefix ge- to give gegee, and the future uses sal. The imperative is just the bare stem.
| Form | Afrikaans | English |
|---|---|---|
| Infinitive | (om te) gee | to give |
| Present | ek/jy/hy gee | I/you/he give(s) |
| Perfect (past) | het gegee | gave / have given |
| Future | sal gee | will give |
| Conditional | sou gee | would give |
| Imperative (sg.) | Gee! | Give! |
Remember that Afrikaans does not conjugate for person: ek gee, jy gee, ons gee, hulle gee are all just gee. The past is the perfect with het for every subject: ek het gegee, hulle het gegee.
Hy gee altyd te veel van homself.
He always gives too much of himself.
Ek het haar my woord gegee dat ek sal help.
I gave her my word that I would help.
The ditransitive frame: who gets what
The core pattern is gee + a thing + a recipient. The recipient (the indirect object) is usually introduced by the preposition vir when it follows the thing given:
Ek gee die boek vir jou.
I'm giving the book to you. / I'm giving you the book.
Sy het 'n present vir haar ma gekoop en dit vir haar gegee.
She bought a present for her mum and gave it to her.
Here vir is functioning as a dative marker — it flags the recipient, not a beneficiary. (That dative vir has its own page, vir as a dative marker; this page only shows you how gee itself behaves.) For most learners the safe, always-correct order is gee + thing + vir + recipient.
Gee asseblief die sout vir my aan.
Please pass me the salt.
The two indirect-object orders
This is where gee is genuinely interesting, and where English speakers can actually rely on an instinct they already have. English allows two orders: give me the book (recipient first, no preposition) and give the book to me (recipient last, with to). Afrikaans mirrors this almost exactly:
- Recipient first, no preposition: gee my die boek ("give me the book")
- Recipient last, with vir: gee die boek vir my ("give the book to me")
Gee my die sleutels — ek ry.
Give me the keys — I'll drive.
Gee die sleutels vir my — ek ry.
Give the keys to me — I'll drive.
Both are correct and both are natural. The difference is the same subtle weight difference English has: putting the recipient first (gee my dit) makes the recipient the established, given information and spotlights the thing; putting it last with vir (gee dit vir my) is the neutral, slightly more explicit order. The ordering of these elements in the clause is governed by the general rules of middle-field word order.
Pronoun objects: a special case
When both objects are pronouns, the recipient-first, no-vir order is the crisp, idiomatic choice — gee my dit ("give me it"). The alternative gee dit vir my ("give it to me") is equally correct and arguably more common in speech. What you should not do is force the thing in front with no preposition on the recipient.
Ek het dit vir hom gegee, nie vir haar nie.
I gave it to him, not to her.
Gee dit vir my; ek sal dit wegbêre.
Give it to me; I'll put it away.
gee in everyday expressions
Gee anchors a handful of high-frequency expressions worth banking early. Gee om (with om) means "to care / to mind"; kans gee means "to give a chance"; pad gee means "to give way / move aside".
Ek gee nie om wat ander mense dink nie.
I don't care what other people think.
Gee hom 'n kans — hy het pas begin.
Give him a chance — he's only just started.
Common Mistakes
❌ Ek gee jou die boek.
Understandable but stilted with two non-pronoun-balanced elements; learners overuse the no-vir order from English.
✅ Ek gee die boek vir jou.
I'm giving you the book.
English speakers default to the double-object order (give you the book) for everything because it is the unmarked English pattern. In Afrikaans the vir order (gee die boek vir jou) is the safer, more natural everyday choice when the thing is a full noun. Reserve the no-vir order for when the recipient is a light pronoun (gee my die boek).
❌ Ek gee die boek jou.
Incorrect — a bare recipient after the thing needs vir.
✅ Ek gee die boek vir jou.
I'm giving the book to you.
If the recipient follows the thing given, it cannot just sit there bare — it needs vir. Omitting it is one of the most common gee errors.
❌ Ek het gee die present.
Incorrect — the perfect needs het + the ge- participle.
✅ Ek het die present gegee.
I gave the present.
The past is het … gegee, with the participle gegee at the end of the clause — not het gee. The bare stem gee never appears in the perfect.
❌ Gee dit aan my.
Marked / regional — aan for the recipient is heavier and less idiomatic than vir in everyday Afrikaans.
✅ Gee dit vir my.
Give it to me.
While aan can mark a recipient (and appears in aangee, "to pass along"), everyday spoken Afrikaans strongly prefers vir for the human recipient of gee. Default to vir.
Key Takeaways
- gee is regular: present gee, perfect het gegee, future sal gee, imperative Gee!. No person agreement.
- The recipient takes vir when it follows the thing given: gee die boek vir jou.
- The recipient drops vir when it precedes the thing given: gee my die boek.
- This two-order system mirrors English give me the book / give the book to me almost exactly — use that instinct, just remember to add vir in the second pattern.
- For full nouns, the vir order is the natural default; the no-vir order shines with light pronoun recipients.
Now practice Afrikaans
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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).
- Order Inside the Bracket: Time, Manner, PlaceB1 — Between the V2 verb and the clause-final verb, Afrikaans orders adverbials Time–Manner–Place — the exact mirror of English Place–Manner–Time, so word-for-word translation reliably mis-orders them.