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Questions & Answers about Elke kamer het ’n venster.
What does Elke mean in this sentence?
Elke is a distributive quantifier meaning “each” or “every.” It’s placed before a singular noun to indicate you’re referring to all individual members of a group one by one (e.g. “every room,” not “all rooms”).
Why isn’t there an article before kamer (like die kamer or ’n kamer)?
In Afrikaans, quantifiers such as Elke, elke, al, etc., replace the need for a separate definite or indefinite article. You never say Elke die kamer or Elke ’n kamer—just Elke kamer, just as in English you say “every room,” not “every a room” or “every the room.”
Why is the indefinite article written as ’n instead of een?
The word een means “one” when you’re counting (just as in English). When een functions purely as an indefinite article (“a/an”), Afrikaans drops the initial e and marks the omission with an apostrophe, giving ’n. It’s pronounced roughly /ən/.
Why does het appear here, and shouldn’t it be heeft (like in Dutch or “has” in English)?
Afrikaans uses the same present-tense form het of the verb hê (“to have”) for all subjects. There is no separate third-person singular form. So you say:
• ek het (“I have”)
• jy het (“you have”)
• hy/sy/dit het (“he/she/it has”)
• ons het (“we have”)
• julle het (“you all have”)
• hulle het (“they have”)
Is the word order here the same as in English?
Yes. Afrikaans main clauses use Subject–Verb–Object (SVO) word order, just like English. In Elke kamer het ’n venster, Elke kamer is the subject, het is the verb, and ’n venster is the object.
Why is venster singular? Don’t rooms have multiple windows?
Here the meaning is “each room has a window” (one window per room). If you want to speak generally about rooms having windows (without the “each”), you could say Kamers het vensters (“rooms have windows”). To express “each room has windows” (more than one per room), use Elke kamer het vensters.
How do you form the plurals of kamer and venster?
Most Afrikaans nouns form the plural by adding -s or -e. For these words:
• kamer → kamers
• venster → vensters