Die onthouding is in die notule.

Die means the.

It appears twice because there are two definite noun phrases in the sentence:

• die onthouding = the abstention
• die notule = the minutes

A useful thing to remember is that Afrikaans uses die as the definite article for all genders and for both singular and plural nouns. So unlike some other European languages, you do not have to learn different forms of the.

Yes, very closely.

Is is the present-tense form of wees (to be). In this sentence it links the subject to a place or location:

• Die onthouding = the subject
• is = is
• in die notule = in the minutes

So the sentence structure is very similar to English here.

Yes. This is a very straightforward main clause:

Die onthouding + is + in die notule

That is:

subject + verb + prepositional phrase

In simple statements like this, Afrikaans often looks very familiar to English speakers. A broader grammar point is that Afrikaans normally puts the finite verb in the second position in main clauses, and this sentence follows that pattern.

Onthouding can have more than one meaning depending on context. It can refer to:

• abstention
• abstinence or self-restraint

In a formal, procedural, or meeting-related context, it usually means abstention. So if the sentence is about records or voting, that is the most likely meaning.

Notule means the official written record of a meeting: the minutes.

This can feel slightly odd to English speakers, because English normally uses the plural word minutes, while Afrikaans commonly uses notule for that same idea. So when you see:

in die notule

you should think:

in the minutes / in the meeting minutes

Because Afrikaans does not usually change articles and nouns for case the way some other languages do.

So after a preposition like in, you still get the normal article die:

• die notule = the minutes
• in die notule = in the minutes

For an English speaker, this is actually a nice feature of Afrikaans: there is usually much less noun-ending or article-changing to worry about.

Because modern Afrikaans does not use grammatical gender in the article system the way languages like German do.

That means die stays die, regardless of whether the noun would have been masculine, feminine, or neuter in another language. So you do not need to memorize separate words for the.

That is why both onthouding and notule simply take die.

You would normally use Afrikaans double negation:

Die onthouding is nie in die notule nie.

This literally looks like:

The abstention is not in the minutes not

But in normal Afrikaans, that double nie ... nie pattern is the standard way to make a sentence negative.

A rough English-friendly guide would be:

dee on-TOU-ding is in dee no-TU-luh

A few notes:

• die sounds like dee
• onthouding has the stress on TOU
• notule has the stress on TU
• the Afrikaans u sound is not exactly the same as an English vowel, so an English approximation is only approximate

Even if your pronunciation is not perfect at first, saying it slowly and clearly will usually be understood.

More or less, yes:

• Die = The
• onthouding = abstention
• is = is
• in = in
• die notule = the minutes

So the sentence maps quite neatly onto English. The only part that may feel less direct is notule, because English prefers minutes rather than a singular-looking noun. But grammatically, the sentence is very transparent.