Die roofvoël het 'n groot vlerkspan.

Die means the.

A useful thing to remember is that Afrikaans uses die for both singular and plural nouns, and it does not change for gender. So:

• die roofvoël = the bird of prey
• die roofvoëls = the birds of prey

It is capitalized here only because it is the first word of the sentence.

Afrikaans forms compound nouns very readily, and they are usually written as a single word.

So:

• roof
  • voël → roofvoël

This is very normal in Afrikaans. English often uses separate words where Afrikaans prefers one compound word.

Also, roof here does not mean the roof of a house. In Afrikaans, a house roof is dak. Here roof relates to robbing, seizing, or preying on something, so roofvoël means a predatory bird, or bird of prey.

The two dots are a diaeresis. They show that the vowels are pronounced separately rather than blending into one sound.

So voël is pronounced in two syllables, roughly like foo-uhl for an English speaker.

Without the diaeresis, a learner might try to read the vowels as a single unit. The dots help prevent that.

Here het means has.

It is the present-tense form of the verb hê, meaning to have. In Afrikaans, verbs usually do not change much depending on the subject, so you get:

• ek het = I have
• jy het = you have
• hy/sy dit het = he/she/it has
• ons het = we have
• hulle het = they have

So Die roofvoël het ... literally means The bird of prey has ...

'n is the Afrikaans indefinite article, meaning a or an.

It is always written with an apostrophe and a lowercase n. It is also usually pronounced very weakly, like a schwa: uh.

A famous spelling point is that 'n stays lowercase even at the beginning of a sentence. For example:

• 'n Groot roofvoël vlieg daar.

Notice that groot, not 'n, takes the capital letter because it is the first fully written word.

Also, 'n is not the same as een.

• 'n = a / an
• een = one

Groot means big or large, and in this sentence it stays in the form groot before the noun.

Afrikaans adjectives sometimes take an extra -e when they come before a noun, but not all adjectives do so in all situations. Groot is one of the very common adjectives that often remains unchanged in ordinary usage, as in:

• 'n groot voël
• 'n groot vlerkspan
• die groot arend

So in this sentence, 'n groot vlerkspan is the normal form.

Vlerkspan is another compound noun:

• vlerk = wing
• span = span / extent

Together, vlerkspan means wingspan.

Again, Afrikaans prefers to write this as one word. English may write similar ideas as one word, two words, or hyphenated, but Afrikaans very often uses a single compound.

The sentence follows the normal Afrikaans main-clause pattern:

• Die roofvoël = subject
• het = finite verb
• 'n groot vlerkspan = object

So it is basically:

Subject + Verb + Object

That is very similar to English here:

The bird of prey has a large wingspan.

A very rough English-friendly guide would be:

dee ROAF-foo-uhl het uh khroht FLERK-spahn

A few important notes:

• die sounds like dee
• 'n is just a weak uh
• g in groot is the guttural Afrikaans sound, not an English g
• v in Afrikaans often sounds close to f to English ears
• voël has two syllables because of the diaeresis

This is only an approximation, but it is a useful start.

Yes, in natural English you could often say:

• The bird of prey has a large wingspan
• The bird of prey has got a large wingspan

But in Afrikaans, the sentence simply uses het for possession. There is no extra word here corresponding to got.

So the Afrikaans structure is straightforward: Die roofvoël het 'n groot vlerkspan.

You could say:

Die roofvoëls het groot vlerkspanne.

That means The birds of prey have large wingspans.

Notice the changes:

• roofvoël → roofvoëls
• vlerkspan → vlerkspanne
• die stays die
• het stays het

Also, in the plural there is no indefinite article like 'n in front of groot vlerkspanne.