Die toonhoogte is hoog.

The musical pitch is high.

Breakdown of Die toonhoogte is hoog.

• wees: to be
• hoog: high
• die toonhoogte: musical pitch

Questions & Answers about Die toonhoogte is hoog.

What does die mean here, and does it change for gender?

Die means the.

A useful thing for English speakers is that Afrikaans does not have different forms of the for different genders. You use die for masculine, feminine, neuter, and also for plurals.

So:

• die toonhoogte = the pitch
• die toonhoogtes = the pitches

That makes articles simpler than in languages like German or Dutch.

Is toonhoogte really one word?

Yes. Afrikaans very often writes compound nouns as one word.

toonhoogte is made from:

• toon = tone
• hoogte = height

So literally it is something like tone-height, but as a normal word it means pitch.

English sometimes uses a single unrelated word, like pitch, where Afrikaans uses a compound.

Why does the sentence seem to contain the idea of high twice?

Because toonhoogte already contains hoogte meaning height, and then the adjective hoog means high.

So the structure is perfectly normal:

• toonhoogte = pitch
• hoog = high

This is not strange in Afrikaans. English does something similar in meaning when we say The pitch is high: the noun already refers to height in sound, and then we still describe it as high or low.