Sy ontwikkel haar loopbaan.

Here Sy means she.

In Afrikaans, sy can mean different things in different contexts, but in this sentence it is clearly the subject pronoun because it comes before the verb ontwikkel.

So:

• Sy ontwikkel ... = She develops ...

Because Afrikaans verbs usually do not change according to the subject the way English verbs sometimes do.

In English, you say:

• I develop
• she develops

But in Afrikaans, the verb stays the same:

• Ek ontwikkel
• Jy ontwikkel
• Sy ontwikkel

So ontwikkel is correct with sy.

Ontwikkel usually means develop.

In this sentence, it means something like:

• to build up
• to improve
• to advance

So Sy ontwikkel haar loopbaan means she is actively working on her career or helping it progress.

Haar means her here.

Because it comes before the noun loopbaan, it is being used as a possessive word:

• haar loopbaan = her career

So the structure is:

• Sy = she
• ontwikkel = develops
• haar loopbaan = her career

Yes. Haar can mean both:

• her as a possessive: haar loopbaan = her career
• her as an object: Ek sien haar = I see her

In your sentence, it is possessive because it comes directly before loopbaan.

Yes, loopbaan is written as one word.

Afrikaans often writes compound nouns as a single word. So even if a word is historically made up of smaller parts, it is treated as one noun.

Here:

• loopbaan = career

You should learn and write it as one unit.

No. Afrikaans does not work like languages that give every noun a grammatical gender.

So loopbaan is not feminine because of haar. The word haar refers to the person who owns the career, not to the noun itself.

In other words:

• haar loopbaan = her career
• the her comes from the woman or girl being talked about, not from the noun loopbaan

Because haar already fills that determiner slot.

Just like in English, you normally do not say:

• the her career

And in Afrikaans you do not say:

• die haar loopbaan

You simply say:

• haar loopbaan = her career

Yes, in this sentence the word order is very similar to English:

• Sy = subject
• ontwikkel = verb
• haar loopbaan = object

So it follows a basic subject–verb–object pattern:

• She develops her career
• Sy ontwikkel haar loopbaan

That said, Afrikaans often uses verb-second word order when something else comes first. For example:

• Vandag ontwikkel sy haar loopbaan.
  = Today she is developing her career.

A rough pronunciation guide is:

• Sy ≈ say
• ontwikkel ≈ ont-VEK-kel
• haar ≈ har
• loopbaan ≈ LOHP-bahn

A rough full pronunciation would be:

say ont-VEK-kel har LOHP-bahn

A few useful notes:

• In Afrikaans, w sounds like an English v
• aa is a long vowel
• oo in loop is a long o sound

Afrikaans usually uses double negation with nie ... nie.

So:

• Sy ontwikkel haar loopbaan.
  = She develops her career.

becomes:

• Sy ontwikkel nie haar loopbaan nie.
  = She does not develop her career.

The usual pattern is:

• first nie after the verb
• second nie near the end of the sentence

Yes. This is a very common point of confusion.

sy can mean:

• she as a subject pronoun
• his as a possessive determiner in other sentences

For example:

• Sy ontwikkel haar loopbaan. = She develops her career.
• sy motor = his car

So you must look at the sentence structure to know which meaning is intended. In your sentence, Sy clearly means she.