Questions & Answers about Ek hang my nat jas by die deur.
How is Ek hang my nat jas by die deur put together?
Why is my used here? Doesn’t my also mean me in Afrikaans?
Why is there no article before my nat jas?
Afrikaans adjectives do not always change the way they do in some other Germanic languages. With short common adjectives like nat, the form often stays the same before the noun.
So my nat jas is normal.
You will also meet adjectives that do appear with an -e form, such as:
So the important point is: adjective forms in Afrikaans are mixed, and nat here is simply the normal form.
Usually no. Afrikaans verbs are much simpler than English verbs in this way.
In the present tense, most verbs keep the same form for all persons:
So Afrikaans does not add an English-style -s for he/she/it in most cases.
It can mean either one, depending on context.
Afrikaans often uses the simple present where English might use either:
If you want to make the ongoing action extra clear, Afrikaans often uses something like:
But in everyday language, the simple form Ek hang ... is often enough.
Because Afrikaans main clauses usually follow the verb-second pattern.
That means the finite verb normally comes very early in the sentence, usually in the second position:
In both sentences, the verb hang stays in that second slot.
This is one of the big sentence-pattern habits to get used to in Afrikaans.
By usually means by, at, near.
So by die deur means the coat is hung by the door or at the door area.
It does not necessarily mean the coat is physically attached on the door itself. If you wanted to stress on the door, Afrikaans might more naturally use aan die deur in the right context.
So here the idea is probably something like:
Not necessarily.
Afrikaans can often use plain hang where English prefers hang up. So Ek hang my nat jas by die deur is fine.
If you want to be more explicit, Afrikaans also has ophang:
That more clearly gives the sense of hang up. But the shorter sentence without op is still natural.
Yes, you can, but the word order changes in the usual Afrikaans way.
For example:
Both are possible. The second version puts more focus on by the door.
What you usually want to avoid as a beginner is moving things around randomly. Afrikaans word order is flexible in some ways, but the verb position must still follow the normal pattern.