A "verb reference" in most languages is a thick book: hundreds of conjugation tables, each verb marching through person, number, tense, and mood. The Afrikaans verb reference is, by comparison, almost embarrassingly thin — and this page explains why, so you know what to look up and what you can safely ignore. If you want the grammar explained (how the perfect is built, why the verb goes to the end), that lives in the Verbs group. These reference pages are the lookup tables you reach for once you understand the system.
Why the reference is so small
The reference is tiny for one decisive reason: Afrikaans verbs do not conjugate for person or number. One form — loop, werk, eet — serves I, you, he, she, we, they. There is no third-person -s, no plural ending, nothing. So the columns that bloat a Spanish or German reference (six forms per tense) collapse to one.
What is left is just three tenses, each built from separate words rather than endings:
| Tense | How it's built | Example (werk = to work) |
|---|---|---|
| Present | bare stem | ek werk |
| Perfect (past) | het + ge-participle | ek het gewerk |
| Future | sal / gaan + infinitive | ek sal werk |
Ek werk by 'n bank.
I work at a bank.
Ek het gister tot laat gewerk.
I worked late yesterday.
Ek sal môre van die huis af werk.
I'll work from home tomorrow.
That is the whole machine. The full explanations live on the verbs overview and the past overview; here we just tabulate.
The two facts you actually look up
Because the three-tense template above is the same for almost every verb, a verb reference does not need to list forms — it only needs to tell you the two things you cannot predict:
- Does the participle take ge-? Almost all verbs add ge- to make the perfect participle (werk → gewerk, speel → gespeel). A small set of verbs — those beginning with the unstressed prefixes be-, ge-, ver-, er-, her-, ont- — do not add another ge- (verstaan → verstaan, betaal → betaal). That's the first lookup.
- Is the verb separable? Some verbs split apart in the present and wrap the ge- inside themselves in the perfect (opstaan → ek staan op → ek het opgestaan). Whether a given verb does this is the second lookup.
Get those two facts and the template does the rest. Everything else about the verb is regular.
A worked template
Here is what a typical reference entry looks like in full, using the perfectly regular werk (to work). Notice there is nothing to memorise beyond the stem — every cell is generated by the template.
| Form | werk | English |
|---|---|---|
| Present | werk | work(s) |
| Perfect participle | gewerk | worked |
| Perfect | het gewerk | has/have worked |
| Future | sal werk | will work |
| Infinitive | (om te) werk | to work |
Sy werk hard.
She works hard.
Hulle het die hele dag gewerk.
They worked all day.
Run thousands of verbs through this and they all behave. The full template with edge cases is on the regular template.
Where the reference earns its keep: the irregulars
If a single template handles almost everything, why have a reference at all? Because of the dozen or so verbs that don't behave — and these are exactly what the rest of this group catalogues:
- wees (to be) is the great exception — it has a distinct present is, a past was, and irregular participle gewees. See wees.
- hê (to have) is irregular and shares its shape with the auxiliary het. See hê.
- The modals kan, moet, wil, sal keep an old past tense (kon, moes, wou, sou) — one of the few places Afrikaans still has a simple past. (Mag has an old past mog, but it is rare and literary; most speakers avoid it.) See the modals table.
- A short list of verbs has an irregular participle that doesn't follow the plain ge- rule.
Ek is moeg.
I'm tired. (wees: present 'is')
Sy was gister hier.
She was here yesterday. (wees: past 'was')
Ons moes vroeg opstaan.
We had to get up early. (modal past 'moes')
Two orthography points to watch
The template is mechanical, but it has two spelling consequences English speakers miss.
First, when ge- lands in front of a stem that already starts with a vowel, the spelling marks the vowel boundary with a diaeresis so the two vowels aren't read as one. Eet (to eat) becomes geëet, not geeet:
Ek het te veel geëet.
I ate too much.
Second, with separable verbs the ge- is infixed — it slots in between the particle and the stem, and the whole thing is written as one word in the participle:
opstaan → Ek het laat opgestaan.
to get up → I got up late.
aankom → Die trein het laat aangekom.
to arrive → The train arrived late.
Both points are spelling-mandatory: geeet and ge opstaan are simply wrong.
Common Mistakes
❌ Hy werks elke dag.
Incorrect — there is no third-person -s; verbs don't conjugate.
✅ Hy werk elke dag.
He works every day.
❌ Ek het geverstaan.
Incorrect — ver- verbs don't add a second ge-.
✅ Ek het verstaan.
I understood.
❌ Ek het geeet.
Incorrect — missing the diaeresis at the ge- + vowel boundary.
✅ Ek het geëet.
I ate.
❌ Ek het opgestaan laat. / Ek het ge-opstaan.
Incorrect — separable verbs infix ge- inside: opgestaan.
✅ Ek het laat opgestaan.
I got up late.
Key takeaways
- The Afrikaans verb reference is tiny because verbs don't conjugate — one form per verb, three analytic tenses.
- For almost every verb you only look up two facts: does it take ge-, and is it separable?
- A single template (present = stem, perfect = het + ge-participle, future = sal/gaan + infinitive) handles thousands of verbs — see the regular template.
- The reference exists for the dozen true irregulars: wees, hê, and the modal past tenses.
- Mind the two spelling traps: geëet (diaeresis) and opgestaan (infixed ge-).
If the why behind any of this is still fuzzy, read the verbs overview first, then come back here to look things up.
Now practice Afrikaans
Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.
Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- The Regular Verb TemplateA1 — Every regular Afrikaans verb is just three forms repeated across all persons — present (bare), perfect (het ge-…), and future (sal …) — shown as a paradigm whose present column is identical in every cell.
- wees (to be) — Full FormsA1 — The complete forms of wees 'to be' — present is, preterite was, future sal wees — the single most irregular verb in Afrikaans.
- hê (to have) — Full FormsA1 — The forms of hê 'to have' — present het, perfect het gehad, future sal hê — and why het leads a double life as both 'have' and the perfect auxiliary.
- The Five Modals (Reference Table)A2 — A one-page reference for kan, mag, moet, wil and sal — present and past (kon, mog, moes, wou, sou), the het kon... perfect cluster, and the bare-infinitive-at-the-end pattern, laid out so the parallel preterite forms jump out.
- Afrikaans Verbs: The Big PictureA1 — Afrikaans verbs do not conjugate for person or number — one form serves every subject, and tense is built with a small set of auxiliaries.
- The Past Tense: het + ge-participleA1 — Afrikaans has one ordinary past tense — het plus a ge-participle at the end of the clause — and it covers both 'I walked' and 'I have walked'.