Sy gee vir die kind 'n sakdoek wanneer haar neus begin loop.

With gee (give), vir marks the recipient: vir die kind = to the child.

A very common Afrikaans pattern is:

gee vir iemand iets
= give someone something

So in this sentence:

Sy gee vir die kind 'n sakdoek
literally follows the pattern She gives to the child a handkerchief.

That is a very normal Afrikaans word order with gee:

Subject + gee + recipient + thing

So:

Sy gee vir die kind 'n sakdoek

is the most neutral way to say it.

You can also say:

Sy gee 'n sakdoek vir die kind

That is also grammatical, but it shifts the focus slightly onto 'n sakdoek.

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

So:

'n sakdoek = a handkerchief

A few useful things to know about 'n:

• it is always written with an apostrophe
• it is not stressed in normal speech
• it is pronounced very weakly, roughly like uh
• it stays lowercase even at the beginning of a sentence

Because haar means her.

In this sentence:

haar neus = her nose

Be careful, because sy can mean two different things in Afrikaans:

• sy = she
• sy = his

So sy neus would normally mean his nose, not her nose.

It could be ambiguous without extra context.

Afrikaans nouns do not have grammatical gender, so kind itself does not tell you whether the child is male or female. That means haar could refer to:

• the woman in Sy gee...
• or the child, if the child is female

If a speaker wanted to make it clearer, they might say something like:

• wanneer die kind se neus begin loop = when the child's nose starts running
• wanneer haar eie neus begin loop = when her own nose starts running

wanneer means when and introduces a time clause.

So:

wanneer haar neus begin loop
= when her nose starts running

It tells you when she gives the handkerchief.

In everyday Afrikaans, as can sometimes also mean when, but wanneer is clearer and more specifically temporal here.

Because wanneer introduces a subordinate clause.

In Afrikaans, subordinate clauses usually push the verbal part toward the end. Here the verb phrase is:

begin loop

So you get:

wanneer haar neus begin loop

With this particular example, the difference is not dramatic because there are two verbs together, but the general idea is still:

• main clauses: the finite verb is typically in second position
• subordinate clauses: the verb part moves to the end area of the clause

After begin, Afrikaans very often uses a bare infinitive directly:

begin loop = start running / start to run

That is a normal and natural structure.

So in this sentence:

haar neus begin loop

the combination begin + loop is exactly what you would expect.

Not only walk. Loop is a very flexible Afrikaans verb.

Depending on context, it can mean things like:

• walk
• run
• go
• flow

In the expression:

'n neus loop

it means a nose runs or a nose is running.

So this is an idiomatic use, not literally the nose walks.

Yes.

sakdoek is made up of:

• sak = pocket / bag
• doek = cloth

So it is literally something like pocket cloth, which matches the idea of a handkerchief.

Afrikaans forms lots of everyday nouns this way, by joining smaller words into one compound.

In standard Afrikaans, vir die kind is the normal choice here.

With gee, Afrikaans strongly prefers:

gee vir iemand iets

So:

Sy gee vir die kind 'n sakdoek

sounds more natural than using aan here.

An English speaker often expects to and may look for a direct equivalent like aan, but with this verb, vir is the usual word.