Hy bestel groen tee wanneer kamerdiens kom.

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Breakdown of Hy bestel groen tee wanneer kamerdiens kom.

• kom: to come
• wanneer: when
• die kamerdiens: the room service

Questions & Answers about Hy bestel groen tee wanneer kamerdiens kom.

What does hy mean?

hy is the third-person singular pronoun in Afrikaans, equivalent to he in English.

Why is the verb bestel not inflected with a -t or changed to bestellen for the third-person subject?

In Afrikaans, present-tense verbs remain in their base (stem) form for all persons. You say ek bestel, jy bestel, hy bestel, etc. There is no extra -t ending or separate infinitive form like in Dutch.

Why is there no article before groen tee?

Here groen tee is used generically—he orders green tea in a habitual sense—so Afrikaans omits 'n (a) or die (the). If you wanted to be specific, you could say 'n koppie groen tee (a cup of green tea) or die groen tee (the green tea).

How do adjectives like groen work in Afrikaans, and why doesn't it become groene?

Afrikaans adjectives are invariable; they do not change form for number or gender. Whether the noun is singular, plural, definite, or indefinite, you keep the adjective in its base form: groen tee.