Die tenoor sing goed.

Here, die is the definite article, the equivalent of English the.

A useful thing to know is that Afrikaans uses die much more widely than English uses the:

• singular: die tenoor
• plural: die tenore

So die does not change for number the way some languages do.

No. In Afrikaans, die does not show grammatical gender.

That means you use the same article with all kinds of nouns:

• die man
• die vrou
• die kind
• die tenoor

This is much simpler than languages that have separate forms for masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns.

Because Afrikaans verbs do not add -s for he/she/it in the present tense.

So you get:

• ek sing
• jy sing
• hy sing
• ons sing
• hulle sing

That is why Die tenoor sing goed uses plain sing, not sings.

Because goed is describing how the singing happens, so it is working like an adverb: well.

Compare:

• Die tenoor sing goed. → goed = well
• Die tenoor is goed. → goed = good
• Die tenoor is 'n goeie sanger. → goeie is the adjective form before a noun

So:

• goed = after the verb, or after is
• goeie = before a noun

Yes. This is the normal basic word order for a main clause in Afrikaans:

subject + verb + other information

So:

• Die tenoor = subject
• sing = verb
• goed = adverb

This is very similar to English in a simple statement.

For comparison:

• statement: Die tenoor sing goed.
• yes/no question: Sing die tenoor goed?

Not in a normal simple statement like this.

The usual order is:

• Die tenoor sing goed.

Putting goed before sing would sound unusual or marked in this kind of sentence. A learner should stick with sing goed in ordinary speech.

A rough guide is:

• die ≈ dee
• tenoor ≈ teh-NOOR
• sing ≈ very close to English sing
• goed ≈ something like khoot or ghoot, with a guttural g

Two pronunciation notes:

• Afrikaans g is usually a throaty sound, not the English g in go
• oe is pronounced like oo in food

So the whole sentence is roughly: dee teh-NOOR sing ghoot

Afrikaans spelling often reflects pronunciation more directly than English spelling does.

In tenoor, the oo shows a long vowel sound. So even though the word is related to English tenor, the Afrikaans spelling follows Afrikaans sound patterns.

This kind of spelling difference is very common with words that look familiar to English speakers.

Because Afrikaans does not capitalize all nouns.

Unlike German, Afrikaans only uses capital letters where English normally would:

• at the start of a sentence
• for proper names

So tenoor stays lowercase unless it starts the sentence.

The plural of tenoor is tenore.

So:

• singular: Die tenoor sing goed.
• plural: Die tenore sing goed.

Notice that die stays the same in both singular and plural.