Ek wil net huis toe gaan.

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Breakdown of Ek wil net huis toe gaan.

• die huis: the house
• wil: to want
• gaan: to go

Questions & Answers about Ek wil net huis toe gaan.

Why is gaan at the end of the sentence?

Because wil is a modal verb, and in a main clause Afrikaans usually puts the finite verb in second position and sends the other verb to the end.

So the pattern is:

Ek + wil + rest of the sentence + gaan

That is why you get:

Ek wil net huis toe gaan.

This is very similar to Dutch and somewhat like German. In English, we keep the two verbs together: I just want to go home. Afrikaans often splits them.

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What does net mean here?

Here net means just or only.

So it adds the idea that the speaker wants one simple thing and nothing more:

Ek wil net huis toe gaan = I just want to go home

Depending on context, net can mean slightly different things, such as:

• just
• only
• simply

In this sentence, just is the most natural English equivalent.

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Why is it huis toe instead of something like na die huis?