The kry-Passive and Recipient Passive

Afrikaans has a third way to background a doer that the textbooks rarely formalise but native speakers use constantly: the kry-construction. Built on the everyday verb kry ("to get, to receive"), it puts the recipient — the person on the receiving end of an action — into subject position, exactly the way English does with its colloquial get-passive ("she got promoted", "I got handed the keys"). This is not the formal word-passive (The Passive with word); it is its warmer, spoken cousin. This page covers only the kry-based construction.

kry as a recipient verb

Start with the plain meaning. kry means "to get" or "to receive", and in its simplest use the recipient is already the subject: the person who gets something is the one we are talking about.

Look at what these sentences quietly do. Nobody is named as the giver. Sy het 'n boek gekry tells you a book reached her, but says nothing about who handed it over — and we do not miss that information. The recipient is the centre of attention; the doer has been pushed out of view. That is the passive function — demoting the agent — achieved with an ordinary active verb. This is why English speakers find kry such a comfortable foothold: it works just like "got" in "she got a book", where the giver is equally invisible.

The kry-passive: a recipient gets an action done to them

Push kry one step further and you get a true get-passive. Here the subject is a person who undergoes an action — they "get" something done to them or for them — and the construction reads as a colloquial passive.

The last example, sleg kry ("to suffer, to have a rough time"), shows how far kry travels from literal receiving: the subject is on the receiving end of hardship, not of a parcel. Throughout, the emphasis sits squarely on the experiencer.

Set this against the formal passive to feel the register difference. A notice on a wall might read die werknemers word oorgeplaas ("the employees are being transferred") — neutral, official, word-passive. In conversation a colleague would more likely say ons kry nuwe kantore ("we're getting new offices") — same news, recipient-centred, relaxed. The kry-version is what people actually say; the word-version is what gets printed.

How it differs from the English get-passive

The parallel with English is genuinely close, which is the good news — but two differences are worth flagging so you do not over-transfer.

First, word order. As an active verb, kry obeys Afrikaans verb-final rules: in the perfect, the participle gekry goes to the end of the clause, after everything else.

Second, kry does not stack a second participle the way English "got built / got promoted" does. English says "the house got built" with a passive participle after "got"; Afrikaans does not generally form kry + past participle as a productive passive. Instead the affected thing is expressed as the object of kry (a noun, 'n bevordering), or kry combines with an adjective or particle (sleg kry, dit reggekry). So translate the meaning of the English get-passive, not its surface shape.

dit reggekry: 'to manage, to pull it off'

One kry-collocation is so common it deserves its own spotlight: dit regkry, literally "to get it right", idiomatically "to manage, to succeed in, to pull something off". The particle reg ("right, correct") combines with kry, and in the perfect it surfaces as reggekry (the ge- infixed, since regkry is a separable verb).

This is the kind of phrase that makes you sound like a native speaker rather than a textbook. It carries a faint note of difficulty overcome — dit reggekry implies the thing took some doing. It belongs firmly to the kry family: the subject "gets" the outcome to come out right. For the broader pattern of light verbs like kry, maak, doen and neem combining with nouns and particles, see Light and support verbs.

Common mistakes

Trying to stack a past participle after kry like the English get-passive. "The house got built" does not map to die huis het gebou gekry. Use the word-passive (or is-passive) for that meaning.

Using kry in a formal, written context where word belongs. Kry is colloquial; an official notice wants the neutral passive.

Forgetting the ge- infix in reggekry. Because regkry is separable, the participle infixes ge-, giving reggekry, not geregkry or regkry.

Naming the giver with deur after kry. Kry is an active verb, so there is no deur-agent. If you must name the giver, use van ("from") or rephrase with gee ("give").

Key takeaways

• The kry-construction uses the everyday verb kry ("get/receive") to put the recipient in subject position, backgrounding the doer — a colloquial, recipient-focused alternative to the formal word-passive.
• It mirrors the English get-passive closely in meaning, which makes it a familiar foothold — but translate the meaning, not the surface shape: Afrikaans does not stack kry + past participle.
• Choose kry for an everyday, person-centred tone; choose word for the neutral, written, action-centred passive.
• dit reggekry ("managed it, pulled it off") is a high-value idiom from the kry family; the participle is reggekry, with the ge- infixed.
• There is no deur-agent after kry; name the giver with van or rephrase with gee.