hoor is one of the most useful verbs in everyday Afrikaans, and it earns its keep three times over. It is the plain verb "to hear"; it heads a perception construction ("I hear him singing"); and — uniquely warm — it doubles as a sentence-final tag that softens a command or a goodbye into something friendly. We will take all three in turn. For the grammar of perception verbs as a class (which sien and voel share), see perception verbs; for the paired verb sien, see sien.
The basic forms
Like nearly every Afrikaans verb, hoor is gloriously regular: one form for every subject, and the past built with het … ge-.
| Tense / form | Form | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Present | hoor | ek hoor, jy hoor, ons hoor |
| Perfect (past) | het gehoor | ek het gehoor |
| Future | sal hoor | ek sal hoor |
| Infinitive | (om te) hoor | om te hoor |
| Imperative | hoor! | Hoor hier! |
Ek hoor 'n vreemde geluid in die enjin.
I hear a strange sound in the engine.
Het jy gehoor wat gebeur het by die werk?
Did you hear what happened at work?
Jy sal binnekort van ons hoor.
You'll hear from us soon.
Note the everyday idiom van iemand hoor, "to hear from someone" — the same preposition logic as English ("hear from us").
hoor + bare infinitive: hearing an action
This is the construction worth mastering. To say you hear someone doing something, Afrikaans uses hoor followed directly by a bare infinitive — no om, no te, nothing between the perceived person and the verb of their action.
Ek hoor hom sing onder die stort.
I hear him singing in the shower.
Ons hoor die kinders buite speel.
We hear the children playing outside.
Sy hoor die reën op die dak val.
She hears the rain falling on the roof.
The pattern is: hoor + [object] + [bare infinitive]. English uses an -ing form ("hear him singing") or a bare infinitive ("hear him sing"); Afrikaans always uses the bare infinitive, and crucially it does not insert om te. This is the single most common error English (and Dutch) learners make here.
In the past: the verb cluster het hom hoor sing
The perception construction in the perfect produces a small verb cluster that looks startling at first. Both hoor and the action infinitive go to the clause end, and — this is the surprising part — hoor appears as a bare infinitive, not as a participle. You say ek het hom hoor sing, not ek het hom gehoor sing.
Ek het hom gisteraand duidelik hoor sing.
I clearly heard him singing last night.
Ons het die bure tot laatnag hoor stry.
We heard the neighbours arguing until late at night.
This is the so-called infinitivus pro participio (the infinitive standing in for the participle), the same effect you meet with modals and other clustering verbs. The bracket reads het … hoor sing: the auxiliary het opens it, the two infinitives hoor sing close it. If you put the ge- in (gehoor), it sounds wrong to a native ear.
hoor vs luister — hear vs listen
A vocabulary distinction that English speakers already feel but must remember to honour. hoor is passive perception — sound reaching your ears, whether you meant it to or not. luister (na) is active attention — deliberately directing your ears at something. You hoor a noise you didn't choose; you luister na music you put on. Note that luister takes the preposition na before its object.
Ek hoor die nuus, maar ek luister nie regtig nie.
I hear the news, but I'm not really listening.
Luister na my — dis belangrik.
Listen to me — this is important.
Sy luister elke aand na musiek voor sy slaap.
She listens to music every evening before she sleeps.
For luister and its companion kyk, see luister and kyk.
hoor as a warm tag — Sit, hoor!
Here is the charming bonus that textbooks omit. hoor tacked onto the end of a sentence stops being a verb at all and becomes a friendly tag particle, roughly "okay?", "all right?", "you hear?" — but warm, not stern. It softens a command, an instruction, or a farewell into something affectionate and informal. It is one of the most distinctive sounds of spoken Afrikaans.
Sit, hoor — maak jou tuis.
Sit down, okay — make yourself at home.
Totsiens, hoor! Ry veilig.
Goodbye now! Drive safely.
Sterkte met die eksamen, hoor.
All the best with the exam, you hear.
Moenie te laat slaap nie, hoor.
Don't go to bed too late, okay.
Used this way, hoor carries no obligation and asks no real question — it is pure warmth and rapport, signalling care for the listener. It belongs to friendly, informal speech and sits naturally after a goodbye, a wish, or a gentle instruction. This pragmatic use overlaps with confirmation tags like nê; see confirmation and agreement.
Common mistakes
❌ Ek hoor hom om te sing.
Incorrect — perception hoor takes a bare infinitive, no om te.
✅ Ek hoor hom sing.
I hear him singing.
❌ Ek het hom gehoor sing.
Incorrect — in the perfect cluster hoor stays a bare infinitive, not the participle.
✅ Ek het hom hoor sing.
I heard him singing.
❌ Ek luister 'n vreemde geluid.
Wrong verb — unintended sound is hoor; and luister needs na.
✅ Ek hoor 'n vreemde geluid.
I hear a strange sound.
❌ Luister my!
Incorrect — luister requires the preposition na before its object.
✅ Luister na my!
Listen to me!
❌ Hoor jy! Totsiens.
Stilted — the warm farewell tag goes at the end: Totsiens, hoor!
✅ Totsiens, hoor!
Goodbye now!
Key takeaways
- hoor is regular: present hoor, perfect het gehoor, future sal hoor; one form for all subjects.
- Perception takes a bare infinitive: ek hoor hom sing — never om te.
- In the perfect, the cluster keeps hoor as a bare infinitive (IPP): ek het hom hoor sing, not gehoor sing.
- hoor = passive hearing; luister na = active listening (with na).
- Sentence-final hoor is a warm, informal tag ("okay?", "you hear?"): Sit, hoor!, Sterkte, hoor!
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- Perception Verbs: sien, hoor, voel + infinitiveB2 — Verbs of perception like sien, hoor and voel take an object plus a bare infinitive for the perceived event, and join the double infinitive in the perfect — ek het hom hoor sing.
- sien (to see) — Full FormsA2 — sien is the everyday verb for 'to see'; it takes a bare-infinitive complement (Ek sien hom kom) and joins the double-infinitive perfect (het hom sien kom), patterning with hoor and laat.
- luister and kyk — to listen and lookA2 — Forms of luister (listen) and kyk (look, watch), both of which obligatorily take na to introduce their object: luister na musiek, kyk na die TV.
- Confirmation and Agreement: nê, of hoe, regB1 — The tags Afrikaans uses to fish for agreement — nê, of hoe, reg? — and the strong tokens for giving it (presies, beslis, absoluut), with the freedom of one invariant tag replacing English's whole question paradigm.