Sy is bereid om te help.

Here, sy means she.

A useful thing to know is that sy can also mean his in other contexts, so learners often get confused. In this sentence, though, it is clearly the subject pronoun:

• Sy is bereid om te help. = She is willing to help.

Because it comes before is, it is functioning as she, not his.

Is is the present-tense form of the verb wees (to be).

So:

• sy is = she is

Afrikaans uses is for the present tense in sentences like this, just as English uses is in she is willing.

Bereid means willing, prepared, or ready in the sense of being mentally prepared to do something.

In this sentence, bereid is best understood as:

• willing
• prepared to

So Sy is bereid om te help means she is willing/prepared to help, not just that she is physically ready.

Om te is a very common way to introduce an infinitive in Afrikaans, similar to English to before a verb.

So:

• help = help
• om te help = to help

After words like bereid, Afrikaans normally uses om te + infinitive:

• bereid om te werk = willing to work
• bereid om te luister = willing to listen
• bereid om te help = willing to help

In standard Afrikaans, with bereid, the normal pattern is bereid om te + verb.

So:

• Sy is bereid om te help. = natural and correct

Leaving out om would usually sound wrong or unnatural here. A learner should treat bereid om te as the standard pattern.

Afrikaans verbs usually do not change form the way English verbs do.

Compare English:

• I help
• she helps

In Afrikaans, the verb stays the same:

• ek help
• sy help

And after om te, you also use the basic verb form:

• om te help

So help does not need an ending.

The sentence follows this pattern:

subject + form of wees + adjective + om te + infinitive

So here:

• Sy = subject
• is = form of wees
• bereid = adjective
• om te help = infinitive phrase

This is a very useful pattern in Afrikaans.

Other examples:

• Hy is gereed om te gaan. = He is ready to go.
• Ek is bly om jou te sien. = I am glad to see you.

A rough guide for an English speaker:

• Sy ≈ say / sigh with an Afrikaans y sound somewhere between them
• is = like English iss
• bereid ≈ buh-RATE or buh-RIDE depending on accent, but with an Afrikaans vowel quality
• om te = om tuh
• help = very close to English help

A simple learner-friendly approximation is:

Say iss buh-RATE om tuh help

That is only approximate, but it is a useful starting point.

Yes, depending on context, it can sometimes be translated as She is ready to help, but She is willing to help is usually the safest translation.

Why?

Because bereid often emphasizes willingness or preparedness, not just being immediately ready.

So:

• willing to help = very natural
• prepared to help = also possible
• ready to help = possible in some contexts

You use the Afrikaans double negative:

• Sy is nie bereid om te help nie.

This means:

• She is not willing to help.

Notice the two nie words:

1. the first nie comes after the finite verb or early in the clause
2. the second nie comes at the end of the clause

This is a very important Afrikaans pattern.

Yes. The rest of the sentence stays mostly the same.

For example:

• Ek is bereid om te help. = I am willing to help.
• Jy is bereid om te help. = You are willing to help.
• Hy is bereid om te help. = He is willing to help.
• Ons is bereid om te help. = We are willing to help.
• Hulle is bereid om te help. = They are willing to help.

This is useful because Afrikaans verbs change much less than English verbs do.

Here, bereid is functioning as an adjective.

It describes sy:

• She is willing

The verb in the sentence is is.
So the structure is not she willing-to-help as one big verb. Instead, it is:

• Sy = subject
• is = verb
• bereid = adjective
• om te help = infinitive phrase explaining what she is willing to do

That is why bereid behaves more like willing in English than like a main verb.