Die sekretaris gee toegang tot die notule.

The secretary gives access to the minutes.

Breakdown of Die sekretaris gee toegang tot die notule.

• gee: to give
• tot: to
• die notule: minutes of a meeting
• die sekretaris: secretary

Questions & Answers about Die sekretaris gee toegang tot die notule.

Why is die used twice in Die sekretaris gee toegang tot die notule?

Die is the Afrikaans definite article, meaning the.

It appears twice because there are two nouns that are definite:

• die sekretaris = the secretary
• die notule = the minutes / the record

Unlike English, Afrikaans uses die for all genders and for both singular and plural definite nouns. So you do not have to learn separate words like the for masculine/feminine/neuter.

What is the basic word order in this sentence?

The sentence follows the normal Afrikaans main-clause word order:

• Die sekretaris = subject
• gee = verb
• toegang = object/complement
• tot die notule = prepositional phrase

So the pattern is basically:

Subject + Verb + Rest

That is very similar to normal English word order:

The secretary + gives/grants + access + to the minutes

Why is the verb gee not changed to match the subject?

In Afrikaans, verbs usually do not change according to the subject the way they do in English.

So you get:

• Ek gee = I give
• Jy gee = you give
• Hy gee = he gives
• Ons gee = we give

English changes give to gives with he/she/it, but Afrikaans keeps gee the same.

That makes Afrikaans verb conjugation much simpler than English.