Beyond the bread-and-butter machinery of prefixes, suffixes and compounding, Afrikaans constantly mints new words by shortening existing ones (clipping), fusing two words into one (blending), and adapting borrowings — overwhelmingly from English. What makes Afrikaans distinctive here is not that it coins words (all living languages do) but how seamlessly each coinage slots into the grammar: a brand-new word takes a plural in -e or -s, a diminutive in -tjie, and a participle in ge- the moment it is born. The lexicon is genuinely dynamic, and this page is about the processes that keep it that way. Full-blown compounding has its own page — see compound nouns; here we cover the non-compounding routes.
Clipping: chopping a long word short
Afrikaans readily lops the end (or occasionally the front) off a longer word, keeping the meaning intact. The clipped form is not slang or sub-standard — many clippings are the normal everyday word, with the full form surviving only in formal writing.
| Full form | Clipping | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| advertensie | advert | advertisement |
| universiteit | varsity (colloq.) | university |
| fotografie / foto | foto | photo |
| laboratorium | lab | lab |
| professor | prof | prof |
Hulle het 'n nuwe advert op die radio.
They've got a new advert on the radio.
Sy doen haar honneurs by die varsity.
She's doing her honours at varsity.
Crucially, the clipped word inflects normally. Advert pluralises to adverts, foto to foto's (the apostrophe-s plural after a vowel), and lab takes a diminutive labbie if you want one.
Ek het al drie foto's van die troue gestuur.
I've already sent three photos of the wedding.
Blending: fusing two words into one
A blend (portmanteau) splices the beginning of one word onto the end of another, so the new word carries traces of both. The classic international example, smog (smoke + fog), is borrowed wholesale into Afrikaans. Afrikaans also forms its own blends, and they take native inflection.
| Blend | From | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| smog | smoke + fog | smog |
| motel | motor + hotel | motel |
| brunch | breakfast + lunch (borrowed) | brunch |
| bromponie | brom (to drone) + ponie (pony) | moped / scooter |
Die smog oor die stad was vanoggend dik.
The smog over the city was thick this morning.
Ons het by 'n klein motel langs die pad oornag.
We stayed overnight at a little motel by the road.
Hy ry werk toe op 'n bromponie.
He rides a moped to work.
A few home-grown blends are fully entrenched — bromponie (a moped, brom "to drone" + ponie "pony") sits in the dictionary and inflects like any noun (twee bromponies). But genuine native blends are rarer than clippings, and many that circulate are playful or journalistic one-offs. Where a blend is a nonce-coinage rather than an entrenched item, treat it as stylistic rather than standard vocabulary.
Borrowing and adapting from English
The single most productive source of new Afrikaans words is English, and the interesting grammatical fact is how thoroughly borrowed stems are naturalised. An English verb borrowed into Afrikaans immediately takes Afrikaans verb morphology: a ge- participle, a clause-final position, the works.
Ek het die dokument gedownload en aangestuur.
I downloaded the document and forwarded it.
Sy het my gisteraand ge-WhatsApp oor die plan.
She WhatsApped me last night about the plan.
Kan jy dit gou vir my google?
Can you quickly google it for me?
Note the spelling devices. When ge- attaches to a borrowed stem that starts with a capital or would be hard to read run-together, writers use a hyphen: ge-WhatsApp, ge-email. The verb still ends the clause and still carries the perfect's het. Borrowed nouns likewise pluralise and diminutivise: die app → die apps, 'n appie (a little app), die screenshot → die screenshots.
Tech and youth coinages
The fastest-moving zone is technology and youth speech, where Afrikaans coins, calques and borrows in real time. Some coinages are deliberate Afrikaans equivalents promoted by language bodies (e.g. rekenaar "computer", literally "reckoner"; selfoon "cellphone", from sel + foon); others are bare English borrowings used with Afrikaans grammar.
My selfoon se battery is amper pap.
My cellphone's battery is almost flat.
Ek het 'n nuwe rekenaar vir die werk gekry.
I got a new computer for work.
Hy het die hele aand op sy foon ge-scroll.
He scrolled on his phone all evening.
Here you see the two strategies coexisting: the engineered native word (selfoon, rekenaar) and the naturalised borrowing (ge-scroll). Which one a speaker reaches for is a register choice — formal writing favours rekenaar, casual speech happily says laptop and foon. This interacts heavily with code-switching; see code-switching and youth slang.
Why this matters: a living, productive lexicon
The takeaway for an advanced learner is that Afrikaans word-creation is not a historical curiosity but a live productive system. You will routinely meet words that are not in any dictionary yet, and you can usually decode and inflect them by the regular rules: clip the end, read off the blend's parents, or peel an English stem out of its ge-/plural/diminutive wrapping. Treating these coinages as "non-standard" misreads the language — naturalised borrowings and clippings are simply how the everyday lexicon renews itself.
Common mistakes
❌ Ek het die lêer download.
Incorrect — a borrowed verb still needs the het + ge- perfect: gedownload.
✅ Ek het die lêer gedownload.
I downloaded the file.
❌ drie foto-e / drie fotos
Incorrect — vowel-final clippings take apostrophe-s: foto's.
✅ drie foto's
three photos
❌ Sy het my geWhatsApp.
Incorrect — ge- on a capitalised borrowing needs a hyphen: ge-WhatsApp.
✅ Sy het my ge-WhatsApp.
She WhatsApped me.
❌ Treating 'selfoon' and 'rekenaar' as wrong because they aren't English.
Incorrect attitude — these are standard engineered Afrikaans words, fully correct.
✅ My selfoon en my rekenaar is altwee nuut.
My cellphone and my computer are both new.
Key takeaways
- Afrikaans coins words by clipping (advertensie → advert), blending (smoke + fog → smog), and adapting English borrowings — alongside the compounding covered on compound nouns.
- Every coinage takes the full Afrikaans inflection immediately: plurals (adverts, foto's), diminutives (appie), and ge- participles (gedownload).
- Borrowed verbs use the normal perfect — het ge- — with a hyphen before a capitalised stem (ge-WhatsApp).
- Engineered native terms (selfoon, rekenaar) and naturalised borrowings (laptop, app) coexist; the choice is a register decision — see code-switching.
- Treat clippings and naturalised borrowings as standard, not sub-standard; they are how the everyday lexicon renews itself.
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Start learning Afrikaans→Related Topics
- Compound NounsB1 — Afrikaans glues compound nouns into single solid words (huiswerk, slaapkamer), sometimes with a linking -s- or -e- — and the right-most element is always the head, so you read them right to left.
- Conversion: Verbs from Nouns and BackC1 — Zero-derivation in Afrikaans — turning nouns into verbs (hamer to hamer, fiets to fiets) and verbs into nouns (die loop) with no suffix, the living engine that absorbs English loan-verbs like gegoogle.
- Code-Switching and English LoansC1 — How contemporary spoken Afrikaans weaves English in and out — and why English loan-verbs and nouns fully inherit Afrikaans morphology (ge-google, gechat, die laptop, 'n e-mailtjie), so the mix is grammatically Afrikaans even when lexically English.
- Abbreviations and AcronymsB2 — Afrikaans abbreviations end in a point (bv., ens., asb.), acronyms take die and an ordinary -s plural, and acronyms and figures pluralise with an apostrophe before the -s (CD's, 1990's).
- Word Formation: OverviewA2 — Afrikaans builds new words with a small but powerful toolkit — a pervasive diminutive, solid compounding, prefixes and suffixes, and a distinctive reduplication that English handles with separate words.
- Youth Slang and Informal InnovationC1 — How contemporary Afrikaans youth slang borrows from English and recoins existing words — and how every borrowing is fully nativised, taking ge-, diminutives, and plurals like any native verb or noun.