Sy ken die betekenis van die woord.

Afrikaans usually distinguishes between two kinds of know:

• ken = to know someone or something, or to be familiar with it
• weet = to know a fact or a piece of information

So Sy ken die betekenis van die woord uses ken because die betekenis is treated as something she knows/is familiar with.

If you want to use weet, you would normally change the structure, for example:

• Sy weet wat die woord beteken.

That is more like She knows what the word means.

Because there are two nouns here:

• die betekenis = the meaning
• die woord = the word

Each definite noun gets its own article. Afrikaans die is much simpler than articles in many other European languages: it does not change for gender or case, and it is also used for plural definite nouns.

Here van means of. It links the two nouns:

• die betekenis van die woord = the meaning of the word

In other contexts, van can also mean from, but in this sentence it is the of meaning.

Yes. That is a very common Afrikaans alternative.

So these are both possible:

• die betekenis van die woord
• die woord se betekenis

They mean essentially the same thing. The se version often feels a bit more direct or conversational.

Here Sy means she.

It is capitalized only because it comes at the beginning of the sentence. In other contexts, lowercase sy can also be a possessive word meaning his, for example:

• sy boek = his book

But in Sy ken die betekenis van die woord, it clearly means she because it is the subject of the verb ken.

Yes. This is a normal Afrikaans main clause:

• Sy = subject
• ken = finite verb
• die betekenis van die woord = object

So the pattern is basically:

subject + verb + object

This is the standard straightforward word order in a main sentence.

No, not in a way that changes the article here.

Afrikaans does not use different forms like masculine/feminine/neuter articles the way some other languages do. The article stays die regardless of the noun.

So both betekenis and woord take die, and you do not need to memorize separate article genders for them.

In this sentence, die is pronounced roughly like dee, not like the English word die.

A few quick pronunciation hints for the whole sentence:

• Sy sounds roughly like say
• ken sounds very close to English ken
• die sounds like dee
• woord starts with a v-like sound, because Afrikaans w is pronounced more like English v

So an approximate guide would be:

say ken dee buh-TEH-ke-nis fan dee voort

That is only approximate, but it helps avoid the most common English-speaker mistakes.