Die passasier sit langs my.

Here die means the.

It is not pronounced like the English verb die. In Afrikaans, die is usually pronounced roughly like dee.

A useful thing to remember is that Afrikaans uses die as the definite article for nouns generally, without separate masculine/feminine forms like some other languages.

No. Afrikaans does not use grammatical gender the way languages like German or French do.

So passasier is simply passenger, and you do not need to learn it as masculine or feminine. That is one reason Afrikaans grammar is often simpler for English speakers.

In Afrikaans, verbs do not change in the present tense the way they do in English.

So you get:

• Ek sit = I sit / I am sitting
• Jy sit = you sit / you are sitting
• Die passasier sit = the passenger sits / is sitting

Unlike English, there is no extra -s for he/she/it.

Langs means next to, beside, or alongside.

In this sentence, langs my means next to me.

It is a preposition, so it introduces a phrase showing position or location.

Because my is the form used after a preposition.

Compare:

• Ek sit. = I am sitting.
  Here ek is the subject.
• langs my = next to me
  Here my comes after the preposition langs, so you use my, not ek.

This is similar to English using me rather than I after a preposition: next to me, not next to I.

No. Although it is spelled the same way, Afrikaans my here means me, not the English possessive my.

That can be confusing at first.

For example:

• langs my = next to me
• my tas = my bag

So the same Afrikaans word my can mean either me or my, depending on the grammar and context.

Afrikaans my is not pronounced like the English word my.

It is pronounced more like may or m-aye, depending on accent. So langs my sounds roughly like lahngs may.

That pronunciation difference is very important, because English speakers often want to say it the English way at first.

No, not as written.

Even though die can be used with both singular and plural nouns, the noun itself shows the number:

• die passasier = the passenger
• die passasiers = the passengers

So Die passasier sit langs my. is singular: The passenger sits/is sitting next to me.

The basic order is:

subject + verb + prepositional phrase

So here:

• Die passasier = subject
• sit = verb
• langs my = prepositional phrase

This is a very normal main-clause word order in Afrikaans.

Yes. Afrikaans often allows another element to come first for emphasis, but then the verb still stays in the second position in a main clause.

For example:

• Langs my sit die passasier.

This still means essentially the same thing, but it gives extra focus to langs my.

The original sentence, Die passasier sit langs my, is the most neutral and straightforward version.