Die kunstenaar werk hier.

here

Breakdown of Die kunstenaar werk hier.

• werk: to work
• die kunstenaar: artist

Questions & Answers about Die kunstenaar werk hier.

Why does the sentence start with die?

Die is the Afrikaans definite article, so it means the.

A very useful thing to know is that Afrikaans uses die for:

• singular nouns
• plural nouns
• all genders

So unlike languages such as German or Dutch, you do not have to learn different forms of the for masculine, feminine, or neuter nouns.

In this sentence, die kunstenaar = the artist.

Also, die here is pronounced dee, not like the English word die.

Does kunstenaar tell us whether the artist is male or female?

Not necessarily. Kunstenaar simply means artist and can be used generally.

Afrikaans does not have grammatical gender in the same way many European languages do, so the article die does not change depending on whether the person is male or female.

Usually, context tells you who is being talked about.

Why is it werk and not something like werks or works?

Afrikaans verbs do not change in the present tense the way English verbs do.

So you get:

• Ek werk = I work
• Jy werk = you work
• Hy werk = he works
• Die kunstenaar werk = the artist works
• Ons werk = we work

The verb stays werk in all these cases.

That is one of the nice simplifications in Afrikaans.