Some Afrikaans verbs must carry a reflexive pronoun even though their English equivalents are plain, pronoun-free verbs. "She is ashamed" is a complete English sentence; the Afrikaans sy skaam is not — it must be sy skaam haar. These inherently reflexive verbs are a small, closed, learnable set, and the only reliable way to handle them is to memorise them as lexical items, pronoun included. This page lists the set; for how reflexives work in general — and why Afrikaans uses ordinary object pronouns rather than a zich-type word — see reflexive verbs and pronouns.
Why English speakers drop the pronoun
The trouble is purely cross-linguistic interference. In every one of these verbs, English expresses the same meaning without any object — "I hurry", "she worries", "he is ashamed", "imagine that!". So the English speaker's instinct gives no signal that anything is missing, and the reflexive pronoun gets dropped. The result, ek haas or sy skaam, is not merely awkward — it is ungrammatical, because for these verbs the pronoun is part of the verb, not an optional object. The verb is lexically incomplete without it.
Ek verbeel my dat ek jou stem hoor.
I imagine that I hear your voice.
Hy haas hom om betyds te wees.
He hurries to be on time.
Sy bekommer haar oor jou.
She worries about you.
In each, the English translation has no object at all — "imagine", "hurry", "worry" — yet Afrikaans demands my, hom, haar. There is no logical shortcut: you cannot predict the reflexive from the English, so you store the whole package (jou verbeel, jou haas, jou bekommer) as a single dictionary entry.
The core set
These are the high-frequency inherently reflexive verbs, cited in the jou- (you/your) dictionary form and translated to the plain English verb they correspond to.
| Afrikaans | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| jou skaam | to be ashamed | Sy skaam haar oor haar foute. |
| jou verbeel | to imagine | Ek verbeel my dinge. |
| jou haas | to hurry | Hy haas hom. |
| jou bekommer | to worry | Sy bekommer haar oor jou. |
| jou verbaas | to be amazed | Ons verbaas ons oor die nuus. |
| jou vergis | to be mistaken | Hy vergis hom in die datum. |
| jou gedra | to behave | Gedra jou! |
| jou bevind | to find oneself (situated) | Ons bevind ons in 'n moeilike situasie. |
Ek verbeel my net dinge — daar is niemand nie.
I'm just imagining things — there's nobody there.
Ons verbaas ons oor hoe vinnig die kind leer.
We're amazed at how fast the child learns.
Hy vergis hom — die vergadering is môre, nie vandag nie.
He's mistaken — the meeting is tomorrow, not today.
Note vergis in particular: hy vergis hom means "he is mistaken / he's made a mistake", and English has no reflexive here at all, which makes it one of the easiest to get wrong. Likewise verbaas: ons verbaas ons is "we are amazed", where English uses a bare adjective phrase ("be amazed").
The pronoun agrees with the subject
The reflexive is an ordinary object pronoun (the same set used everywhere — see reflexive pronouns), so it changes with the subject. This is the second place errors creep in: learners pick the right verb but the wrong pronoun.
| Subject | jou skaam | jou bekommer |
|---|---|---|
| ek | ek skaam my | ek bekommer my |
| jy | jy skaam jou | jy bekommer jou |
| hy | hy skaam hom | hy bekommer hom |
| sy | sy skaam haar | sy bekommer haar |
| ons | ons skaam ons | ons bekommer ons |
| julle | julle skaam julle | julle bekommer julle |
| hulle | hulle skaam hulle | hulle bekommer hulle |
Moenie jou bekommer nie — alles sal regkom.
Don't worry — everything will be fine.
Haas jou, anders is ons laat!
Hurry up, or we'll be late!
Watch the imperative: haas jou!, gedra jou!, moenie jou bekommer nie — the jou stays even in commands, because it is still part of the verb. And it stays the plain object pronoun: it is haas jou, never haas jouself. The emphatic -self form is for disambiguation and emphasis (covered on reflexive verbs); the inherent verbs take the bare pronoun.
In the perfect
These verbs form a regular perfect with het + the ge- participle, and the reflexive pronoun sits inside the verb bracket, before the participle: het haar geskaam, het my verbeel, het hom gehaas. The pronoun does not move or disappear in the past.
Sy het haar oor niks geskaam nie.
She wasn't ashamed of anything.
Ek het my verbeel dat iemand klop.
I imagined that someone was knocking.
Verbs with an unstressed prefix (be-, ver-, ge-) take no extra ge- in the participle — bekommer → bekommer, verbeel → verbeel, verbaas → verbaas — so the participle looks identical to the base. Skaam and haas, with no prefix, do take it: geskaam, gehaas.
Overlap with Dutch zich-verbs
If you know any Dutch, there is a useful shortcut: most of these verbs are zich-verbs in Dutch too. Dutch zich schamen (be ashamed), zich haasten (hurry), zich vergissen (be mistaken), zich verbeelden (imagine), zich bekommeren (worry) all map onto the Afrikaans inherent reflexives — with Dutch zich simply replaced by the Afrikaans object pronoun. So a Dutch speaker already has the set; they only need to swap zich for my / jou / hom / haar. An English speaker has no such crutch, which is exactly why the set has to be memorised cold.
Sy verbaas haar oor hoe stil dit is.
She's amazed at how quiet it is.
Common mistakes
❌ Sy skaam oor haar foute.
Incorrect — skaam is inherently reflexive and needs the pronoun haar.
✅ Sy skaam haar oor haar foute.
She's ashamed of her mistakes.
❌ Ek verbeel dat ek jou stem hoor.
Incorrect — verbeel requires the reflexive my.
✅ Ek verbeel my dat ek jou stem hoor.
I imagine that I hear your voice.
❌ Hy vergis in die datum.
Incorrect — vergis ('be mistaken') needs the reflexive hom; English has no pronoun here, which is why learners drop it.
✅ Hy vergis hom in die datum.
He's mistaken about the date.
❌ Sy bekommer hom oor jou.
Wrong pronoun — it must agree with the subject sy, so it is haar.
✅ Sy bekommer haar oor jou.
She worries about you.
❌ Haas jouself!
Overmarked — inherent reflexives take the plain object jou, not jouself.
✅ Haas jou!
Hurry up!
Key takeaways
- A small closed set of Afrikaans verbs obligatorily takes a reflexive object where English uses a plain verb: jou skaam, jou verbeel, jou haas, jou bekommer, jou verbaas, jou vergis, jou gedra, jou bevind.
- Memorise each as a two-word unit with its pronoun — the English gives no cue, so you cannot predict the reflexive.
- The pronoun is an ordinary object form and must agree with the subject: ek skaam my, sy skaam haar, ons skaam ons.
- Keep it bare — haas jou, not haas jouself; the -self form would overmark these verbs.
- Most overlap with Dutch zich-verbs, so Dutch speakers get the set for free by swapping zich for the object pronoun; for the wider reflexive system see reflexive verbs and pronouns.
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- Reflexive Verbs and PronounsB1 — Afrikaans builds reflexive constructions from the ordinary object pronouns (ek was my, sy skaam haar) — there is no special reflexive like Dutch zich — and -self adds emphasis.
- Reflexive Pronouns and -selfB1 — Afrikaans has no dedicated reflexive like Dutch zich — the ordinary object pronoun does the job (ek was my, hy skeer hom), -self adds emphasis or disambiguates, and mekaar means 'each other'.