Die betaal-en-vertoonmasjien druk die parkeermeterkaartjie.

Die is the Afrikaans definite article, equivalent to the. It appears before both nouns because both are definite: the pay-and-display machine and the parking meter ticket.

A useful thing to remember is that Afrikaans does not change the definite article for gender or number. It is simply die in all these cases.

Afrikaans strongly prefers compound nouns, just like Dutch and German. What English often writes as several words, Afrikaans often joins into one noun.

Here, masjien is the main noun, and betaal-en-vertoon describes what kind of machine it is. Because betaal-en-vertoon is itself a multi-part expression, hyphens are used to hold that part together before it joins masjien.

So the structure is basically:

• betaal-en-vertoon
  • masjien
• pay-and-display
  • machine

For the same reason: Afrikaans loves compounds. Instead of writing something like parking meter ticket as separate words, Afrikaans normally builds one compound noun.

You can think of it as layered like this:

• parkeer
  • meter = parkeermeter
• parkeermeter
  • kaartjie = parkeermeterkaartjie

English often leaves noun combinations separate, but Afrikaans usually joins them.

Afrikaans verbs do not change form the way English verbs do in the present tense. The verb stays the same for all persons:

• ek druk
• jy druk
• hy/sy dit druk
• ons druk

So where English says I print but it prints, Afrikaans just uses druk in both cases.

No. Druk can have several related meanings, depending on context. It can mean things like:

• print
• press
• push

In this sentence, because the subject is a machine and the object is a ticket, druk is naturally understood as prints.

This is a normal main clause, so Afrikaans uses the basic subject–verb–object pattern here:

• Die betaal-en-vertoonmasjien = subject
• druk = verb
• die parkeermeterkaartjie = object

So the sentence lines up neatly with English in this case. Afrikaans word order becomes more noticeably different in other structures, especially when another element comes first or in subordinate clauses.

In this sentence, word order tells you that. In a straightforward statement, the noun phrase before the verb is usually the subject, and the noun phrase after the verb is usually the object.

So:

• Die betaal-en-vertoonmasjien does the action
• die parkeermeterkaartjie receives the action

That is why the machine is the subject and the ticket is the object.

Kaartjie is a diminutive form of kaart. In Afrikaans, diminutives are extremely common and often do not literally mean that something is physically small. They are just the normal word in many everyday contexts.

Here, kaartjie is the usual kind of word for a ticket. So even though it comes from kaart, you should learn kaartjie as a standard word in its own right.

Afrikaans simple present forms often cover both ideas, depending on context. So druk can mean:

• prints
• is printing

If no extra context is given, English usually translates it with the simple present here: prints. But in the right situation, it could also describe an action happening right now.

No. One of the helpful things about Afrikaans is that it has much less inflection than many other European languages.

In this sentence:

• nouns do not change for grammatical gender
• the article stays die
• the verb stays druk
• there are no case endings like separate forms for subject and object

That makes sentences like this much more straightforward to build than in languages with heavier noun and article inflection.