Sy ry haar fiets na die skool.

She rides her bicycle to the school.

Breakdown of Sy ry haar fiets na die skool.

• sy: she
• na: to
• haar: her
• die skool: the school
• ry: to ride
• die fiets: the bicycle

Questions & Answers about Sy ry haar fiets na die skool.

What’s the difference between sy and haar in this sentence?

sy is the third-person feminine singular subject pronoun (‘she’). haar is used as both an object pronoun (‘her’) and a possessive determiner (‘her’ before a noun). In Sy ry haar fiets na die skool, sy = ‘she’ (the rider) and haar = ‘her’ (belonging to her) modifying fiets.

Why doesn’t the verb ry change to something like rys or ryt for ‘she rides’?

Afrikaans verbs do not inflect for person or number in the present tense. You use the bare infinitive stem for all subjects: ek ry, jy ry, sy ry, ons ry, julle ry, hulle ry.

How do we know haar is a possessive determiner here, and not the object pronoun?

When haar immediately precedes a noun, it functions as a possessive determiner (genitive): haar fiets = ‘her bike’. As an object pronoun it stands alone (e.g. Ek sien haar = ‘I see her’). If you said Sy ry haar without a noun, context would tell you ‘She rides her (as in a person or animal)’.

What is the standard word order in this sentence, and how do you form a yes/no question?

Affirmative main clauses follow Subject–Verb–Object–Adverbial (S-V-O-A):
Sy (S) ry (V) haar fiets (O) na die skool (A).
To form a yes/no question invert Subject and Verb:
Ry sy haar fiets na die skool?

How would you make this sentence negative?

Use the double-nie construction, placing the first nie after the verb or object phrase and the second at the end:
Sy ry nie haar fiets na die skool nie.

Why is it na die skool, and can you say skool toe instead?

na + die literally means ‘to the’. There’s no contraction in writing. However, Afrikaans often uses a directional adverb with -toe:
Skool toe (‘to school’) is more idiomatic than na die skool, so you could also say Sy ry haar fiets skool toe.

How would you say ‘they ride their bikes to school’?

Subject: hulle (‘they’)
Possessive: hul (‘their’, no -le)
Bike plural: fietse
School: skool toe or na die skool
So: Hulle ry hul fietse na die skool.
Or more colloquially: Hulle ry hul fietse skool toe.

How are ry, fiets, and skool pronounced?

• ry [rei] – rhymes with English ‘ray’
• fiets [fits] – ‘ie’ = /i/, final ‘s’ as in ‘fits’
• skool [skuːl] – ‘oo’ = long /uː/ as in English ‘cool’