Word
Die koerantargief is groot.
Meaning
The newspaper archive is large.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Lesson
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Questions & Answers about Die koerantargief is groot.
Why does the sentence start with die?
Die is the Afrikaans definite article, so it usually means the in English.
In Die koerantargief is groot, die tells you that we are talking about a specific newspaper archive: the newspaper archive.
A useful thing to know is that Afrikaans uses die for:
- singular nouns
- plural nouns
So unlike English, the form does not change.
Examples:
- die boek = the book
- die boeke = the books
What kind of word is koerantargief?
Koerantargief is a compound noun. Afrikaans, like Dutch and German, often joins nouns together into one word.
It is made up of:
- koerant = newspaper
- argief = archive
So koerantargief literally means something like newspaper archive.
This is very common in Afrikaans. English sometimes writes similar ideas as separate words, but Afrikaans often prefers one compound word.
More examples of this pattern:
- skoolbiblioteek = school library
- tafeldoek = tablecloth
Why is koerantargief written as one word and not two?