Die kelner bring ’n bottel water en twee bekers.

No. In Afrikaans, die is usually pronounced roughly like dee.

So in this sentence, Die kelner sounds more like dee kelner, not like the English verb die.

Yes. Die is the Afrikaans definite article, so it means the.

A useful thing for English speakers is that Afrikaans does not change the for gender. You use die for:

• masculine nouns
• feminine nouns
• neuter nouns
• plural nouns

So die kelner = the waiter.

’n is the Afrikaans indefinite article, meaning a or an.

It is always written as ’n, with an apostrophe before the n. Its pronunciation is very weak, usually like the a in about.

So:

• ’n bottel = a bottle

A helpful extra point: even at the beginning of a sentence, ’n normally stays lowercase:

• ’n Kelner bring water.

Afrikaans often leaves out the word corresponding to English of in this kind of expression.

So:

• ’n bottel water = a bottle of water
• ’n koppie tee = a cup of tea
• ’n glas melk = a glass of milk

This pattern is very common with containers, quantities, and food or drink.

Because water is being used as a mass noun, and in this structure Afrikaans normally does not add another article.

So:

• ’n bottel water literally looks like a bottle water, but it naturally means a bottle of water

The first noun, bottel, already tells you the quantity/container, so water does not need its own article here.

Because after a number bigger than one, Afrikaans normally uses the plural noun.

Here:

• singular: beker
• plural: bekers

So:

• een beker = one cup
• twee bekers = two cups

In this case, the plural is made by adding -s.

Bring is the Afrikaans verb to bring, and in the present tense Afrikaans verbs do not change according to the subject the way English verbs do.

So you get:

• ek bring = I bring
• jy bring = you bring
• hy bring = he brings
• hulle bring = they bring

The verb stays bring in all those cases.

Yes. This is normal Afrikaans main-clause word order.

The parts are:

• Die kelner = subject
• bring = finite verb
• ’n bottel water en twee bekers = object

So the sentence follows the basic pattern:

subject + verb + rest

Also, Afrikaans main clauses follow the verb-second rule. In this sentence, the subject comes first, so the verb naturally comes second:

• Die kelner bring ...

If something else came first, the verb would still stay second:

• Vandag bring die kelner ’n bottel water en twee bekers.

It most often means cup, mug, or beaker, depending on context.

In a sentence like this, bekers is often translated as cups or mugs. If you specifically meant drinking glasses, Afrikaans would often use glase instead.

So the exact English word can depend on the situation, even though the Afrikaans word is the same.

Kelner traditionally means waiter, especially a male server. A feminine form kelnerin exists, but in practice learners will very often just meet kelner in basic examples.

So in this sentence, die kelner is most naturally understood as the waiter.