Some verbs do not describe an action of their own — they describe the phase of another action: its beginning, its middle, or its end. These are the phasal verbs, and Afrikaans has a tidy set of them: begin (to start), ophou (to stop), aanhou (to keep on / continue), and an inchoative use of gaan (to be going to / about to). Where the adverbs al and nog tell you whether an action is finished or ongoing, these verbs let you talk about the transitions — starting it, stopping it, persisting at it. The trickiest part for English speakers is not the meaning but the complement: which of these verbs takes a bare infinitive, which takes om te, and which takes met. This page sorts that out. (The future-tense use of gaan, "going to," is a separate topic — see the future overview.)
begin — starting an action
begin means to start / to begin. It is generous about its complement: it accepts both a bare infinitive and a full om te clause, with no change in meaning. The bare-infinitive version is lighter and more common in speech.
Ek begin verstaan wat hy bedoel.
I'm beginning to understand what he means.
Dit het begin reën net toe ons by die huis kom.
It started to rain just as we got home.
Sy het begin om die waarheid te vertel.
She began to tell the truth.
Both begin verstaan (bare) and begin om te verstaan (full clause) are correct. Use the bare infinitive for short, direct statements and the om te clause when the complement is longer or you want it to feel more deliberate. For the rules governing that om te clause itself — where the te sits, where the object goes — see om te clauses.
Wanneer het jy begin Afrikaans leer?
When did you start learning Afrikaans?
ophou — stopping an action
ophou means to stop / to cease. It is a separable verb: the stressed particle op breaks off in a main clause, so it appears as hou … op. As a bare command it is the everyday word for "Stop!":
Hou op!
Stop it!
Hou op om te skreeu — ek kan jou hoor.
Stop shouting — I can hear you.
Like begin, ophou accepts both a bare infinitive and an om te clause:
Ons kan ophou bekommerd wees — alles is reg.
We can stop worrying — everything's fine.
Hy het opgehou om sigarette te rook.
He stopped smoking cigarettes.
There is also a met-construction — ophou met + a noun — when you want to name the activity as a thing rather than spell out a verb:
Sy het opgehou met haar studies.
She stopped (with) her studies.
So ophou has three doors: bare infinitive (ophou rook), om te clause (ophou om te rook), and met + noun (ophou met die werk). Pick met when a noun is the natural object, the infinitive constructions when a verb is.
aanhou — keeping on, continuing
aanhou means to keep on / to carry on / to persist. This is the one with no clean single-word English match, because English expresses continuative aspect with the keep -ing pattern (keep talking, keep going), and Afrikaans packs that whole idea into one verb. Like its sibling ophou, it is separable, splitting to hou … aan.
The most common complement is met + a noun naming the activity:
Sy hou aan met werk al is sy moeg.
She keeps on working even though she's tired.
Hou aan met die goeie werk!
Keep up the good work!
But aanhou also takes a verb directly, with no met and no om te — just the bare verb trailing after it. This is the closest mirror to English keep talking:
Hy hou aan praat en praat.
He keeps on talking and talking.
Hou net aan probeer — jy is amper daar.
Just keep on trying — you're almost there.
The thing to fix in memory is the contrast with ophou: the op particle ends the action, the aan particle continues it. They are a matched pair, distinguished only by their particle — hou op (stop) versus hou aan (carry on) — which is a beautiful illustration of how much work an Afrikaans particle does.
- noun (hou aan met werk) or aanhou
- bare verb (hou aan praat) — never aanhou om te.
gaan — the inchoative "about to / going to"
gaan (to go) has an aspectual use that signals an action on the verge of happening — the inchoative. Dit gaan reën does not mean anyone is travelling anywhere; it means rain is imminent, "it's about to rain / it's going to rain." Here gaan takes a bare infinitive with no te.
Dit gaan reën — kyk na daardie wolke.
It's going to rain — look at those clouds.
Pasop, jy gaan val!
Careful, you're going to fall!
Ek dink dit gaan 'n lang dag wees.
I think it's going to be a long day.
This inchoative gaan shades naturally into the future tense — the line between "it's about to rain" and "it will rain" is thin — which is exactly why the broader future use of gaan gets its own treatment in the future overview. For this page, the point is the aspectual flavour: gaan + bare verb frames an action as imminent, just on the threshold of starting.
The complement at a glance
The single thing to get right with phasal verbs is the complement. Here is the whole system in one view:
| Verb | Meaning | Complement | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| begin | start | bare infinitive or om te | begin verstaan / begin om te verstaan |
| ophou | stop | bare inf. / om te / met + noun | ophou rook / ophou om te rook / ophou met werk |
| aanhou | keep on | bare verb or met + noun | hou aan praat / hou aan met werk |
| gaan (inchoative) | about to | bare infinitive (no te) | dit gaan reën |
The error trap is putting om te where it doesn't belong. gaan never takes it (gaan om te reën is wrong); aanhou never takes it (aanhou om te praat is wrong — use met + noun or a bare verb instead). Only begin and ophou allow the om te clause, and even they don't require it.
Common mistakes
❌ Dit gaan om te reën.
Incorrect — inchoative gaan takes a bare infinitive, never om te.
✅ Dit gaan reën.
It's going to rain.
❌ Hy hou aan om te praat.
Incorrect — aanhou doesn't take om te; use a bare verb or met + noun.
✅ Hy hou aan praat. / Hy hou aan met praat.
He keeps on talking.
❌ Ophou skreeu!
Incorrect — ophou is separable; the command splits to Hou op.
✅ Hou op skreeu! / Hou op om te skreeu!
Stop shouting!
❌ Ek begin te verstaan.
Incorrect — with a bare infinitive there's no te; it's either 'begin verstaan' or the full 'begin om te verstaan'.
✅ Ek begin verstaan.
I'm beginning to understand.
❌ Sy hou op haar studies.
Incorrect — to stop an activity named by a noun you need met: ophou met.
✅ Sy hou op met haar studies.
She's stopping her studies.
Key takeaways
- Phasal verbs mark the phase of another action — start (begin), stop (ophou), keep on (aanhou), about to (gaan) — complementing the finished/ongoing contrast of al and nog.
- begin and ophou take a bare infinitive or an om te clause; only these two allow om te.
- ophou and aanhou are separable (hou op, hou aan) and form a particle pair — op ends the action, aan continues it.
- aanhou is Afrikaans for English keep -ing: aanhou
- bare verb (hou aan praat) or aanhou met
- noun (hou aan met werk) — never aanhou om te.
- bare verb (hou aan praat) or aanhou met
- Inchoative gaan
- bare infinitive = "about to / going to": Dit gaan reën — and it shades into the future tense.
Now practice Afrikaans
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- The Future: sal and gaanA2 — Afrikaans has two future auxiliaries — sal (will) and gaan (going to) — plus the option of the plain present with a time word; how to pick between them and where the verb goes.
- Expressing 'Already', 'Still', 'Yet'B1 — How the aspectual adverbs al/reeds (already), nog (still) and nog nie (not yet) do the temporal fine-tuning that English handles with the perfect and pluperfect.
- Infinitival Clauses: om teA2 — The om te + infinitive clause — Afrikaans's standard 'in order to' and infinitive complement — where om opens the clause and te clings to the infinitive at the very end, bracketing everything in between.