Die polisiestasie is ver.

A rough guide is:

• Die → dee
• polisiestasie → roughly po-lee-see-sta-see
• is → like iss
• ver → roughly fer

Two useful pronunciation notes:

• Afrikaans die is not pronounced like the English word die. It sounds like dee.
• Afrikaans v often sounds close to an English f, so ver sounds like fer.

Here is the breakdown:

• Die = the
• polisiestasie = police station
• is = is
• ver = far

So the structure is very straightforward:

• subject: Die polisiestasie
• verb: is
• description: ver

Die is the Afrikaans definite article, meaning the.

So die polisiestasie means the police station, not a police station.

A helpful thing for English speakers: Afrikaans uses die for:

• singular nouns
• plural nouns
• all genders

So unlike languages such as German or Dutch, you do not have to learn different forms for masculine, feminine, or neuter here.

No. That is one of the nice things about Afrikaans.

Die stays die for:

• masculine nouns
• feminine nouns
• neuter nouns
• singular nouns
• plural nouns

So in this sentence, die is just the normal word for the.

Afrikaans very often writes compound nouns as a single word.

So:

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

This is very normal in Afrikaans. English often writes similar ideas as two words, but Afrikaans prefers one compound word.

Mostly yes.

Is is the present-tense form of the verb wees, which means to be.

So:

• Die polisiestasie is ver = The police station is far

In simple statements like this, it works very much like English is.

Because ver is describing the subject through the verb is.

This is called a predicative use of the adjective:

• Die polisiestasie is ver = The police station is far

English does the same thing:

• The station is far

So the pattern is:

• noun + is + adjective

That is why ver comes after is here.

Here ver means far or far away.

It usually refers to distance. In this sentence, the idea is that the police station is not nearby.

Afrikaans often uses just ver where English might say either:

• far
• far away

So Die polisiestasie is ver is a perfectly natural sentence.

Yes. Ver weg means far away more explicitly.

So:

• Die polisiestasie is ver = The police station is far
• Die polisiestasie is ver weg = The police station is far away

Both are natural. Ver weg just sounds a little more explicit about distance.

You would usually say:

Die polisiestasie is nie ver nie.

Afrikaans commonly uses a double nie pattern for negation:

• one nie after the verb phrase
• another nie near the end of the sentence

So:

• is ver → is nie ver nie

This means is not far.

Yes, this is the basic normal word order for a simple statement:

• Die polisiestasie = subject
• is = verb
• ver = complement/adjective

So the sentence follows the common pattern:

• subject + verb + rest

For a beginner, this is a very standard Afrikaans sentence structure.