Almost every infinitive complement in Afrikaans is introduced by om te: Ek probeer om te slaap (I'm trying to sleep), Dit is tyd om te gaan (it's time to go). That construction is fully productive — you can build it with virtually any verb. This page is about the other infinitive, the one that drops om and uses te alone. It survives in only a handful of places: a few posture-and-aspect constructions and a small bank of fixed expressions. Knowing the closed set is the whole skill, because outside it, inserting a bare te sounds wrong, and inside it, inserting om sounds equally wrong.
Two different te-infinitives
It helps to see from the start that Afrikaans has two infinitive patterns that English collapses into one "to + verb":
| Pattern | Productivity | Example |
|---|---|---|
om te
| Open — works with most verbs | Ek hoop om te wen. |
| bare te + infinitive | Closed — fixed posture/aspect verbs and set phrases | Hy staan te wag. |
The productive om te clause has its own page, om te clauses. Everything below is the closed bare-te set. The distinguishing fact, which most reference books blur, is that these are two genuinely separate constructions — not one with an "optional" om. You cannot freely choose; the slot decides for you.
Posture verbs: staan, sit, lê, loop + te
Afrikaans uses the posture verbs staan (stand), sit (sit), lê (lie), and loop (walk/go) plus bare te plus a second verb to express an action happening while in that posture — and, by extension, an action in progress. This is one of the language's most idiomatic ways to mark ongoing activity, roughly where English would just use the bare verb or "-ing".
Hy staan te wag by die hek.
He's standing waiting at the gate.
Sy sit te lees in die son.
She's sitting reading in the sun.
Die kinders lê te slaap.
The children are lying asleep.
The second verb, wag / lees / slaap, goes to the end of the clause as a bare infinitive, with te clipped to its front. There is no om anywhere. Note also that the posture verb here is half-bleached: Hy staan te wag does not strongly insist he is literally upright — it has drifted toward simply meaning "he is waiting", much as English "he's sitting there complaining" need not mean he is seated. The fuller treatment of this aspectual use is on posture verb constructions.
Wat staan jy daar te doen?
What are you doing standing there?
Fixed expressions: te koop, te huur, te wagte
A second pocket of bare te lives in frozen phrases, especially with the copula is. These are not generated from a rule; they are learned whole, like English "for sale" or "to let".
| Phrase | Literal | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| te koop | to buy | for sale |
| te huur | to rent | for rent / to let |
| te kry | to get | available, to be had |
| te wagte | to expecting | expected, anticipated |
| te doen (met) | to do (with) | to do (with) |
Die huis langs ons is te koop.
The house next to us is for sale.
Daar is 'n woonstel te huur in ons straat.
There's a flat to let on our street.
Kaartjies is nog te kry by die deur.
Tickets are still available at the door.
Notice that English uses for in "for sale / for rent", not "to"; the Afrikaans te here is closer to an old "to be bought / to be rented" sense that English preserves only in archaic phrases like "a house to let". Treat te koop and te huur as single lexical units — you will see them on signs and in classified ads exactly like this.
het te doen met — "to have to do with"
The single most useful fixed expression in this family is het ... te doen met, meaning to have something / nothing to do with. It almost always appears with a quantity word like iets (something), niks (nothing), or alles (everything), and in the negative it triggers the closing nie of the negation bracket.
Dit het niks met jou te doen nie.
That has nothing to do with you.
Sy probleme het niks met geld te doen nie.
His problems have nothing to do with money.
Wat het dit met die saak te doen?
What does that have to do with the matter?
Watch the order: the te doen drops to the very end of the clause (it is a non-finite verb obeying the verb bracket), and in a negated sentence the closing nie lands after it: ... te doen nie. The chunk met jou / met geld sits inside the bracket, before te doen.
te alone with behoort and hoef
Two modal-like verbs always take a bare te before their infinitive: behoort (ought to) and hoef (need to, used almost only in the negative). These are genuine grammar, not frozen idioms, but they belong here because they are the everyday verbs that demand bare te.
Jy behoort te weet hoe laat dit is.
You ought to know what time it is.
Ons behoort hom te bel voordat ons gaan.
We ought to call him before we go.
Jy hoef nie te kom nie — ek kan dit alleen doen.
You don't need to come — I can do it alone.
Behoort te is the standard way to say "ought to / should (morally or by expectation)". Hoef nie te ... nie is the standard "don't need to / needn't"; it is almost never used affirmatively in modern Afrikaans — for "you need to", speakers say jy moet instead. Note again the bracket: in Jy hoef nie te kom nie, the infinitive kom sits at the end and the closing nie follows it.
Common mistakes
The errors below are nearly all the same instinct: an English speaker who has learned the safe, productive om te over-applies it to the closed bare-te set.
❌ Hy staan om te wag.
Incorrect — posture verbs take bare te, never om te.
✅ Hy staan te wag.
He's standing waiting.
❌ Die huis is om te koop.
Incorrect — te koop is a fixed phrase; om is wrong (and it would suggest 'in order to buy').
✅ Die huis is te koop.
The house is for sale.
❌ Dit het niks om te doen met jou nie.
Incorrect — the fixed expression is het ... te doen met, with bare te and the te doen at the end.
✅ Dit het niks met jou te doen nie.
That has nothing to do with you.
❌ Jy behoort om te weet.
Incorrect — behoort always takes bare te, never om te.
✅ Jy behoort te weet.
You ought to know.
❌ Jy hoef nie om te kom nie.
Incorrect — hoef takes bare te; and the infinitive must close the bracket before the final nie.
✅ Jy hoef nie te kom nie.
You don't need to come.
Key takeaways
- Afrikaans has two infinitive patterns: the open, productive om te and a closed bare-te set covered here.
- Posture verbs — staan, sit, lê, loop — take te + infinitive to mark an action in progress: Hy staan te wag.
- Fixed phrases — te koop, te huur, te kry, te doen met — are learned whole; Die huis is te koop, Dit het niks met jou te doen nie.
- behoort ("ought to") and hoef ("need to", mostly negative) always take a bare te, while ordinary modals (kan, moet, wil, mag, sal) take no particle at all.
- The infinitive still obeys the verb bracket: it drops to the clause end, with any closing nie after it.
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- 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.
- Posture Verbs: sit, staan, lê, loop + enB1 — How sit, staan, lê and loop combine with en plus a second verb to mark ongoing action — an aspect marker hiding inside a posture word.
- Fixed Prepositional PhrasesB1 — Set phrases like op pad, te koop, in die geheim and aan die brand, where the preposition is idiomatic, the article is often dropped, and the whole phrase must be learned as a unit.
- The Infinitive: loop, om te loopA1 — The Afrikaans infinitive is just the bare verb — used directly after modals, and wrapped in 'om te' for purpose and complement clauses.
- The Verb Bracket: Clause-Final Non-Finite VerbsA2 — In Afrikaans, the finite verb sits second while every other verb — participle, infinitive, separable particle — drops to the very end, framing the clause in a 'verb bracket'.