Die telefoon lui, maar ek antwoord nie die oproep nie.

Because standard Afrikaans usually uses double negation.

In a basic negative sentence, you often get:

• the first nie somewhere after the verb
• the second nie near the end of the clause

So:

• Ek antwoord die oproep. = I answer the call.
• Ek antwoord nie die oproep nie. = I do not answer the call.

A useful beginner pattern is:

subject + verb + nie + rest of clause + nie

That is exactly what you see here:

• ek = subject
• antwoord = verb
• nie = first negation marker
• die oproep = object
• nie = second negation marker

In a simple main clause, the first nie normally comes after the finite verb.

So Afrikaans does not usually say:

• Ek nie antwoord die oproep nie ❌

Instead it says:

• Ek antwoord nie die oproep nie ✅

This is one of the most important word-order habits to learn in Afrikaans. English uses do not answer, but Afrikaans does not need a separate do. It simply places nie after the verb.

That is part of the normal Afrikaans negative structure. The second nie acts like a closing marker for the negative clause.

So the sentence is framed like this:

• Ek antwoord nie ... nie

You can think of it as the clause being wrapped in negation.

This final nie is very common in standard Afrikaans, and leaving it out would usually sound incomplete or non-standard to learners of standard Afrikaans.

Maar means but.

It connects two main clauses:

• Die telefoon lui
• maar ek antwoord nie die oproep nie

Because maar is a coordinating conjunction, it does not force the verb to the end. The second clause keeps normal main-clause word order:

• maar ek antwoord ...

Compare that with English:

• The phone rings, but I do not answer the call.

So in this sentence, maar simply joins two ideas that contrast with each other.

Because Afrikaans verbs do not change form the way English verbs often do.

In English, you say:

• I ring
• he rings

But in Afrikaans, the verb usually stays the same:

• Ek lui or in this case Die telefoon lui
• Hy lui
• Hulle lui

So lui is just the normal present-tense verb form here.

A learner should notice that Afrikaans verbs are usually much simpler than English ones in this respect.

In this sentence, lui means ring or is ringing, as in a phone or bell.

However, lui can also be an adjective meaning lazy in other contexts. So it is one of those words whose meaning depends on context.

Here, because the subject is die telefoon, the meaning is clearly:

• The phone is ringing

They refer to related but different things:

• telefoon = the telephone / phone
• oproep = the call

So:

• Die telefoon lui = The phone is ringing
• ek antwoord nie die oproep nie = I am not answering the call

In English, we often use phone for both the device and the call, but Afrikaans distinguishes them clearly in this sentence.

Because die is the definite article in Afrikaans, meaning the.

So:

• die telefoon = the phone
• die oproep = the call

Afrikaans does not change the for gender the way some languages do. The same article die works for all genders and for plural nouns too.

That makes articles in Afrikaans much simpler than in many European languages.

Yes, in this sentence antwoord is a verb:

• ek antwoord = I answer

But antwoord can also be a noun meaning answer, depending on the sentence.

Examples:

• Ek antwoord die oproep. = I answer the call.
• Die antwoord is reg. = The answer is correct.

So learners need to identify its role from the sentence structure.

No, not normally. If you remove the object, you would usually say:

• Ek antwoord nie. = I do not answer. / I am not answering.

In shorter sentences, the second nie may be absent because there is nothing after the first nie to frame. But in a full clause like the one you were given, standard Afrikaans uses the full pattern:

• Ek antwoord nie die oproep nie.

So:

• with an object: Ek antwoord nie die oproep nie
• without an object: Ek antwoord nie

Sometimes, but not in exactly the same way.

• antwoord usually means answer
• beantwoord can mean answer too, often in a slightly more formal or more direct-object sense

For phone calls, antwoord is very natural:

• Ek antwoord die oproep nie would be wrong because of negation placement, but
• Ek antwoord nie die oproep nie is good.

You may also hear expressions like:

• Ek beantwoord die vraag. = I answer the question.

For a beginner, antwoord is the best and most natural verb to focus on in this sentence.

Because Afrikaans forms negation differently from English.

English often needs do:

• I do not answer the call

Afrikaans does not use an extra helper verb here. It simply uses the main verb plus nie:

• Ek antwoord nie die oproep nie

So instead of learning an equivalent of English do-support, it is better to learn the Afrikaans negation pattern directly.