Die polisiestasie is naby.

Die here is the Afrikaans definite article, equivalent to English the.

It is capitalized simply because it is the first word of the sentence. In the middle of a sentence, it would normally be written die.

A useful thing for English speakers: Afrikaans uses die for all genders and for plural nouns too. So unlike languages such as German or Dutch, you do not need to learn different forms for masculine, feminine, and neuter in everyday standard usage.

Yes. Afrikaans often writes compound nouns as one word, just like Dutch and German often do.

So:

• polisie = police
• stasie = station
• polisiestasie = police station

English usually writes police station as two words, but Afrikaans combines them into a single compound noun.

This is very common in Afrikaans, so learners should get used to looking for long one-word nouns.

This sentence actually is very close to English word order:

• Die polisiestasie = the police station
• is = is
• naby = near / nearby

So the structure is:

subject + verb + complement

That is a very normal main-clause pattern in Afrikaans.

The sentence sounds natural because naby is being used predicatively after is, similar to English The police station is nearby.

In this sentence, naby functions like near or nearby in English.

Afrikaans naby can be used in more than one way:

• as a kind of adverb/adjectival complement:
  Die polisiestasie is naby.
  = The police station is nearby.

• with an object, more like a preposition:
  Die polisiestasie is naby die bank.
  = The police station is near the bank.

So in your sentence, naby stands on its own and means nearby.

Because Afrikaans allows naby to stand by itself when the meaning is already complete.

Compare:

• Die polisiestasie is naby. = The police station is nearby.
• Die polisiestasie is naby die hotel. = The police station is near the hotel.

English often distinguishes between near and nearby, but Afrikaans naby can cover both ideas depending on context.

Often yes, but not always in every grammatical sense.

In this sentence, is is the present-tense form of wees or is as the verb to be, and it matches English is very closely:

• Dit is goed. = It is good.
• Die polisiestasie is naby. = The police station is nearby.

For English speakers, this is one of the easier Afrikaans verbs in simple present statements.

No, not in the way you would in many other European languages.

Afrikaans does not require you to learn grammatical gender for nouns in ordinary usage. So polisiestasie does not need a special article based on gender. You simply use die for the.

That makes Afrikaans simpler than languages where you must memorize whether a noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter.

A rough English-friendly guide is:

dee po-lee-see-STAA-see uh is nah-bay

A few helpful notes:

• Die in Afrikaans is usually pronounced roughly like dee, not like English die.
• polisiestasie has the stress fairly strongly on STAA.
• naby is roughly nah-bay.

Pronunciation varies a bit by speaker and accent, but if you say it approximately that way, you will be understood.

In simple Afrikaans yes/no questions, the verb usually comes first.

So:

• Statement: Die polisiestasie is naby.
• Question: Is die polisiestasie naby?

That means:

• The police station is nearby.
• Is the police station nearby?

This is very similar to English inversion.

Afrikaans usually uses double negation.

So the negative form would be:

Die polisiestasie is nie naby nie.

Literally, Afrikaans often places one nie after the verb or predicate area, and another nie at the end of the clause.

For an English speaker, this is one of the most important Afrikaans patterns to learn.

Yes, sometimes you will see naby aan when a following noun is expressed, especially for emphasis or style:

• Die polisiestasie is naby aan die winkel.

But very often plain naby is enough:

• Die polisiestasie is naby die winkel.

Both are understandable, but naby without aan is very common and natural.

The plural is polisiestasies.

So:

• die polisiestasie = the police station
• die polisiestasies = the police stations

Notice that die stays the same in the plural too. That is another way Afrikaans keeps things relatively simple.

Yes, it sounds perfectly natural.

It is a short, normal sentence that someone might use when giving directions or describing a location:

• Waar is die polisiestasie? = Where is the police station?
• Die polisiestasie is naby. = The police station is nearby.

It is simple, idiomatic, and useful for everyday conversation.