Questions & Answers about Ons het die konsert onlangs gesien.
Why does Afrikaans use het ... gesien here instead of a single past-tense verb like English saw?
Afrikaans usually talks about completed past actions with the perfect tense: het + past participle.
So Ons het die konsert onlangs gesien is the normal everyday way to say both:
- We saw the concert recently
- We have seen the concert recently
Unlike English, Afrikaans does not usually use a separate simple past form for most verbs in ordinary speech.
What do het and gesien each mean in this sentence?
They work together as a verb phrase:
- het = the auxiliary verb, like English have
- gesien = the past participle of sien (to see)
So literally, the structure is something like We have the concert recently seen, although in natural English you would translate it as We saw the concert recently or We have seen the concert recently.
Why is gesien at the end of the sentence?