Die selfdienskiosk is oop.

to be

Breakdown of Die selfdienskiosk is oop.

• oop: open
• die selfdienskiosk: self-service kiosk

Questions & Answers about Die selfdienskiosk is oop.

What does die mean here?

Die means the.

A few useful things to know about die in Afrikaans:

• It is the definite article.
• Afrikaans does not change the word for gender, so the same die is used for masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns.
• It is also used with plural nouns.

So in Die selfdienskiosk is oop, die simply means the.

Why is selfdienskiosk written as one word?

Afrikaans very often writes compound nouns as one word, much more consistently than English does.

So:

• selfdiens = self-service
• kiosk = kiosk
• selfdienskiosk = self-service kiosk

This is completely normal in Afrikaans. English speakers often want to split long words up, but in Afrikaans they are usually joined together.

What parts make up selfdienskiosk?

It can be broken down like this:

• self = self
• diens = service
• kiosk = kiosk

Together, selfdiens means self-service, and then selfdienskiosk means self-service kiosk.

This kind of building-block structure is very common in Afrikaans vocabulary.

Why is is used here?