Die koning sien die film.

The king sees the film.

Breakdown of Die koning sien die film.

• sien: to see
• die film: film; movie
• die koning: king

Questions & Answers about Die koning sien die film.

Why is die used twice in Die koning sien die film?

In Afrikaans, die is the definite article, meaning the. It is used for both singular and plural nouns.

So in this sentence:

• die koning = the king
• die film = the film / the movie

Unlike English, Afrikaans does not change the article for gender, and it does not have separate forms like the versus something more specific for masculine or feminine nouns.

Does Afrikaans have grammatical gender here? Is koning masculine?

Koning means king, so it refers to a male person in meaning, but Afrikaans does not use grammatical gender the way languages like German or Dutch do.

That means:

• the noun itself may refer to a male or female person in real life
• but the article stays die
• adjectives and articles do not usually change for grammatical gender

So although koning is male in meaning, that does not affect the form of die.

Why is the word order Die koning sien die film and not something else?

This is a normal main-clause word order in Afrikaans:

• Die koning = subject
• sien = verb
• die film = object

So the structure is:

Subject + Verb + Object

That is the same basic order as in English:

The king sees the film

Afrikaans often looks very familiar to English speakers in simple statements like this.