Sy beskou haarself in die spieël.

Haarself means herself. It is the reflexive form, used when the subject and the object are the same person.

So in Sy beskou haarself, the person doing the action (sy = she) is also the person receiving the action (herself).

Using just haar would normally mean her, referring to another female person, not the same one.

• Sy beskou haarself = She regards/looks at herself
• Sy beskou haar = She regards/looks at her (someone else)

Yes, haarself is normally written as one word in standard Afrikaans.

The same pattern appears with other reflexive forms:

• myself = myself
• jouself = yourself
• homself = himself
• haarself = herself
• onsself = ourselves
• julleself = yourselves
• hulleself = themselves

Not usually. Beskou is a bit more formal or thoughtful than basic look at.

It often means things like:

• regard
• view
• consider
• observe

In this sentence, it can work as she looks at herself in the mirror, but the tone is a little more reflective or deliberate than everyday kyk na.

Compare:

• Sy kyk na haarself in die spieël = She looks at herself in the mirror
• Sy beskou haarself in die spieël = She regards/observes herself in the mirror

So beskou is not wrong at all, but it is slightly less casual.

Because Afrikaans verbs do not usually change according to the subject the way English verbs do.

In English:

• I look
• she looks

In Afrikaans:

• Ek beskou
• Sy beskou

The verb stays the same. This is one of the simpler parts of Afrikaans grammar.

It is in the present tense.

Sy beskou haarself in die spieël can often correspond to either:

• She regards herself in the mirror
• She is looking at herself in the mirror

Afrikaans often uses the simple present where English might use either the simple present or the present continuous, depending on context.

Afrikaans uses in die spieël in the same idiomatic way English uses in the mirror.

It does not mean she is physically inside the mirror. It means she sees her reflection there.

So this phrase is perfectly normal:

• in die spieël = in the mirror

Die means the.

Afrikaans uses die for:

• singular nouns: die spieël = the mirror
• plural nouns: die boeke = the books

So unlike English, there is no separate word for singular and plural the.

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

So spieël is simply mirror, and the article is just die. You do not have to learn masculine, feminine, or neuter noun classes for ordinary Afrikaans nouns.

Sy here means she.

Be careful, because Afrikaans has some short pronouns that can look similar at first:

• sy = she
• haar = her
• hy = he
• hom = him

In this sentence:

• Sy = the subject, the person doing the action
• haarself = the object, the same person referred back to reflexively

Because this is a straightforward main clause with the subject first:

• Sy = subject
• beskou = verb
• haarself = object
• in die spieël = prepositional phrase

So the pattern is basically:

Subject + Verb + Object + Place

That said, Afrikaans is often described as a verb-second language. In this sentence, the subject happens to come first, so the verb naturally comes second anyway.

For example, if another element came first, the verb would still stay in second position:

• In die spieël beskou sy haarself.

That sounds more marked or literary, but it shows the verb-second pattern clearly.

The ë shows that the vowels are pronounced separately rather than merged into one sound.

So spieël is pronounced roughly like:

• spee-uhl
• or more carefully, spie-el

The two vowel parts are kept apart. The dots help the reader see that.

Without the diaeresis, a learner might be tempted to treat it as one smooth vowel sequence.

A rough English-friendly guide is:

• buh-SKOH

The second part rhymes approximately with English go, though the exact vowel is Afrikaans, not English.

The stress is typically on the second syllable: be-SKOU.

Not naturally in most contexts.

Although beskou can mean consider or regard, the phrase in die spieël strongly pushes the meaning toward physically observing her reflection.

So in this sentence, the most natural reading is that she is looking at or examining herself in the mirror, not merely forming an opinion about herself.

Not with the same meaning.

• in die spieël = in the mirror, meaning in the reflection
• na die spieël = at/to the mirror

If you wanted to say she is looking at the mirror itself, you might use na with a different verb, for example:

• Sy kyk na die spieël = She looks at the mirror

But if the idea is that she sees herself reflected there, in die spieël is the natural phrase.

It is grammatical and clear, but beskou sounds a little more formal, literary, or thoughtful than everyday speech.

In ordinary conversation, many speakers would more naturally say:

• Sy kyk na haarself in die spieël.

So your sentence is fine, but it has a slightly more deliberate tone.