Expressing the Habitual Past: 'used to'

English has a tidy little construction for repeated past actions that no longer happen: I used to live there, we used to go every summer, she used to smoke. Afrikaans has no single equivalent — there is no verb meaning used to, and no special tense. Instead it expresses the habitual past with one of four strategies, each carrying a slightly different flavour and register. This page teaches all four and tells you when to reach for which. For the wider picture of how Afrikaans handles aspect with adverbs and periphrasis generally, see aspectual periphrasis; here we zoom in on used to alone.

Why there is no "used to" verb

Afrikaans builds its entire past on the perfect with het, and that perfect is aspectually neutral — it does not tell you whether something happened once or a thousand times. So the language cannot mark "habitual" inside the verb. It marks it the way it marks most aspectual distinctions: by adding a word outside the verb. The repeated, no-longer-current meaning of English used to is reconstructed from an adverb of frequency or formerness sitting next to an ordinary perfect.

Strategy 1: het gewoonlik + perfect (the everyday default)

The most common, register-neutral way to say used to is gewoonlik ("usually", "as a rule"), slotted into a normal perfect. It explicitly flags the action as the speaker's habit or routine.

Word order matters: gewoonlik sits in the middle field, after het and the subject, before the past participle that closes the clause. It is the safest choice in conversation, email, or any neutral register, and it is the one to default to if you are unsure.

Strategy 2: vroeër + perfect (formerly, in earlier days)

Vroeër literally means "earlier" or "formerly". Fronting it sets up an explicit contrast with the present: things were one way back then, by implication not anymore — which is exactly the discontinued-habit meaning English used to carries.

Putting vroeër at the front of the sentence triggers the usual Afrikaans inversion — the verb het comes before the subject (vroeër het ons …, not vroeër ons het). Vroeër is especially natural when you are drawing a then-versus-now contrast, and it pairs beautifully with deesdae ("nowadays") in the answering clause. For related time adverbs see time adverbs.

Strategy 3: sou + infinitive (literary "would")

Here Afrikaans does something that feels uncannily familiar to English speakers. English has a second used to — the narrative would: "every summer we would drive down to the coast, and my grandfather would sit on the stoep all afternoon." Afrikaans has the exact same device with sou + infinitive. Sou is the past form of sal ("will"), and in this habitual use it paints a recurring scene in past narration.

This is the one strategy that is register-marked: it is literary and narrative (think memoir, fiction, an obituary, a nostalgic feature article). In casual speech it can sound a touch elevated, and it also risks ambiguity with the conditional sou ("would" as in would, if — see the conditional), so the habitual reading leans on a frequency cue like elke dag or elke Kersfees to disambiguate. Use it when you are telling a story about the past, not when you are simply reporting a fact.

Strategy 4: bare perfect + frequency adverb

Often you do not need any special "used-to" marker at all. A plain perfect, given a frequency adverb like elke dag ("every day"), altyd ("always") or dikwels ("often"), already reads as habitual. Context and the frequency word do the work; nothing signals discontinuation explicitly, but a past frequency naturally implies it.

This is the leanest strategy and the closest to how Afrikaans actually works under the hood: an aspectually neutral perfect plus an adverb that supplies the habitual reading. If you want to be explicit that the habit has stopped, add gewoonlik or front vroeër; if the context already makes it clear, the bare perfect with a frequency adverb is enough.

Common Mistakes

The single most common error is translating used to word for word with gebruik ("to use"). It produces something that means nothing like the habitual past. There is no used-to verb — use gewoonlik, vroeër, or a frequency adverb.

Gewoond wees aan ("to be used to / accustomed to") is a real construction, but it describes a current state of familiarity, not a former repeated action. For the discontinued-habit used to, you need the perfect with vroeër or gewoonlik.

When you front vroeër, the finite verb het must come immediately after it, before the subject. Forgetting the inversion is a classic transfer error from English, which keeps subject-before-verb even after a fronted adverb.

The literary sou only reads as habitual when a frequency expression anchors it. Bare sou stap defaults to the conditional. Always supply the elke … cue when you mean the recurring-past sense.

Key Takeaways

• Afrikaans has no dedicated "used to" form. The habitual past is reconstructed from an adverb beside an ordinary perfect.
• het gewoonlik
  • perfect is the neutral, everyday default — reach for it when in doubt.
• vroeër
  • perfect stresses the then-versus-now contrast and triggers verb-second inversion when fronted.
• sou
  • infinitive is the literary narrative "would" — vivid for storytelling, but needs a frequency cue to avoid clashing with the conditional.
• A bare perfect plus a frequency adverb (elke dag, altyd, dikwels) is often all you need.
• Avoid the false friends gebruik ("to use") and gewoond wees ("to be accustomed to") — neither expresses the discontinued habit.