sien is the ordinary, high-frequency verb for "to see" — perceiving something with your eyes. It is one of the first hundred verbs you will use, it shows up in the everyday farewell Sien jou! ("See you!"), and it belongs to a small, important club: the perception verbs that take a bare infinitive (Ek sien hom kom — "I see him coming"). That last property is what makes sien worth a page of its own, because English speakers reliably mis-build it. We give the plain forms first, then the construction that trips people up.
The basic forms
Like every Afrikaans verb, sien has one form for all subjects — there is no -s, no person endings, nothing to conjugate (see Afrikaans verbs overview). The work is done by tense auxiliaries.
| Tense | Form | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Present | sien | Ek sien jou. |
| Perfect (past) | het … gesien | Ek het jou gesien. |
| Future | sal … sien | Ek sal jou sien. |
| Infinitive (with om te) | om te sien | Ek hoop om jou te sien. |
The participle is gesien (the regular ge- prefix on sien). Nothing irregular happens here.
Ek sien die berge van my venster af.
I can see the mountains from my window.
Het jy gesien wat gister gebeur het?
Did you see what happened yesterday?
Ons sal mekaar volgende week sien.
We'll see each other next week.
sien + bare infinitive: seeing an action happen
Here is the property that sets sien apart. When you see somebody doing something, English uses either "-ing" ("I see him coming") or a bare infinitive ("I see him come"). Afrikaans uses a bare infinitive — the plain verb, with no om te in front of it.
Ek sien hom kom.
I see him coming. / I see him come.
Sy sien die kinders in die tuin speel.
She sees the children playing in the garden.
Ons het hulle by die hek sien wag.
We saw them waiting at the gate.
The object (hom, die kinders, hulle) comes first; the bare infinitive (kom, speel, wag) goes to the end. This is exactly the pattern of hoor ("hear") and the causative laat ("let/make") — they are siblings, the perception verbs and causatives, and you can read the wider family on hoor and causative laat.
The single most important thing to remember: do not insert om te. English speakers, primed by the infinitive "to," want to say Ek sien hom om te kom — but that is wrong. After a perception verb the infinitive is bare.
The double-infinitive perfect: het hom sien kom
Now put that construction into the past and something striking happens. You would expect the participle gesien, but it does not appear. Instead, in the perfect, sien itself stays as a bare infinitive and stacks with the complement infinitive, giving the order het … sien + [verb]:
Ek het hom sien kom.
I saw him coming.
Sy het die kinders in die tuin sien speel.
She saw the children playing in the garden.
Ons het die vliegtuig sien opstyg.
We saw the plane take off.
This is the double-infinitive (or Ersatzinfinitiv — "substitute infinitive"). When a perception verb or causative governs another infinitive, its own perfect participle is replaced by the infinitive: gesien → sien. So the cluster at the end is two bare verbs, sien kom, with the auxiliary het second. There is no ge- anywhere in the cluster. Full treatment on the double infinitive.
| Without a complement | With an infinitive complement |
|---|---|
| Ek het hom gesien. (I saw him.) | Ek het hom sien kom. (I saw him coming.) |
| perfect = het … gesien | perfect = het … sien + infinitive |
So whether you use gesien or sien in the past depends entirely on whether there is a second verb. Did you see him? → Het jy hom gesien? But Did you see him leave? → Het jy hom sien loop?
sien vs kyk: "see" vs "look/watch"
English splits perception into see (passive, it just reaches your eyes) and look/watch (active, you direct your eyes). Afrikaans makes the same split, and learners must keep it straight:
- sien — to see, to perceive visually (often involuntary): Ek sien jou ("I can see you").
- kyk — to look, to watch (deliberate, directed): Kyk na die foto ("Look at the photo"); Ons kyk TV ("We watch TV").
Kyk na daardie wolke — sien jy die reën aankom?
Look at those clouds — do you see the rain coming?
Ek het na die film gekyk, maar ek het niks gesien nie — dit was te donker.
I watched the film, but I couldn't see anything — it was too dark.
Note that kyk usually needs the preposition na ("at") for its object — kyk na iets — whereas sien takes a direct object with no preposition: sien iets. More on the pair at luister and kyk.
Everyday idioms with sien
A handful of fixed expressions are worth memorising whole, because they are extremely common in speech:
Sien jou!
See you! (casual goodbye)
Totsiens!
Goodbye! (literally 'till seeing', the standard formal/neutral farewell)
Sien jou later!
See you later!
Ek het dit sien kom.
I saw it coming.
Ek sien daarna uit.
I'm looking forward to it.
Totsiens — literally tot siens ("until seeing") — is the everyday word for "goodbye," parallel to German auf Wiedersehen and Dutch tot ziens. Ek sien daarna uit uses the separable verb uitsien (na), "to look forward to."
Common mistakes
❌ Ek sien hom om te kom.
Incorrect — no om te after a perception verb; the infinitive is bare.
✅ Ek sien hom kom.
I see him coming.
❌ Ek het hom gesien kom.
Incorrect — with an infinitive complement, sien stays a bare infinitive, not the participle: 'het hom sien kom'.
✅ Ek het hom sien kom.
I saw him coming.
❌ Ek sien na die foto.
Incorrect — directed looking is kyk na, not sien na.
✅ Ek kyk na die foto.
I'm looking at the photo.
❌ Ek het jou gesien gister nie.
Incorrect — stray nie; a plain affirmative perfect has no nie. Also place the time adverb before the participle.
✅ Ek het jou gister gesien.
I saw you yesterday.
Key takeaways
- sien is fully regular for its plain forms: present sien, perfect het … gesien, future sal … sien.
- As a perception verb it takes a bare infinitive — Ek sien hom kom, never om te kom.
- In the perfect with a complement, sien joins the double infinitive: het hom *sien kom, not *het hom gesien kom. The participle gesien only appears when there is no second verb.
- Keep sien (passive "see") apart from kyk na (active "look at / watch").
- Learn the idioms whole: Sien jou!, Sien jou later!, Totsiens!, Ek sien daarna uit.
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
- 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.
- The Double Infinitive (IPP)B2 — In the perfect, causative laat, perception verbs (hoor, sien) and modals don't take a participle — they appear as a bare infinitive, producing the het + infinitive + infinitive cluster known as the IPP effect.
- hoor (to hear) — Full FormsA2 — The forms of hoor (to hear), its bare-infinitive perception complement (ek hoor hom sing), the hoor/luister contrast, and its warm sentence-final tag use.
- 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.
- weet (to know a fact) — Full FormsA2 — Full forms of weet — present weet, perfect het geweet, future sal weet, and the archaic preterite wis — plus the all-important split with ken: weet is for facts, ken is for people and things you're acquainted with.