Die suurdeeg bly in die lugdigte blik.

Because Afrikaans uses die for the in both places:

• Die suurdeeg = the sourdough
• in die lugdigte blik = in the airtight container/tin

Unlike English, Afrikaans does not change the for gender, and die is also used for both singular and plural definite nouns.

Suurdeeg literally means sour dough, but in normal usage it usually refers to sourdough or a sourdough starter, depending on context.

It is a compound word:

• suur = sour
• deeg = dough

So it works much like English compound nouns.

Here bly means stays or remains.

So Die suurdeeg bly in die lugdigte blik means that the sourdough stays/remains in the airtight container.

This is different from:

• is = is
• bly = stays/remains

So bly adds the idea of continuing to be there, not just being there.

Yes, you could, but the meaning shifts slightly.

• Die suurdeeg is in die lugdigte blik = The sourdough is in the airtight container.
• Die suurdeeg bly in die lugdigte blik = The sourdough stays/remains in the airtight container.

Use is for simple location. Use bly when you want to emphasize that it continues to be kept there.

Lugdigte means airtight.

The base adjective is lugdig = airtight. When an adjective comes before a noun in Afrikaans, it often takes an extra -e ending:

• die blik is lugdig = the container is airtight
• die lugdigte blik = the airtight container

So the -e is there because the adjective is being used directly before blik.

Blik can mean tin, can, or sometimes a metal container.

In this sentence, the most natural English meaning is probably container or tin, depending on context. If this is about storing sourdough starter, airtight container is usually the best translation.

So die lugdigte blik is best understood as the airtight container/tin.

This is normal main-clause Afrikaans word order:

• Die suurdeeg = subject
• bly = verb
• in die lugdigte blik = prepositional phrase showing location

So the pattern is:

Subject + Verb + Place

That is very similar to English:

• The sourdough stays in the airtight container.

Afrikaans main clauses usually keep the finite verb in the second position.

Yes. Here it works very directly:

• in = in
• die = the

So:

• in die blik = in the container/tin

This is one of the easier parts of the sentence for English speakers, because it matches English quite closely.

A simple English-friendly guide would be:

• die ≈ dee
• suurdeeg ≈ seer-dakeh or suur-daykh
• bly ≈ something like blay with a different vowel, closer to Dutch blij
• lugdigte ≈ lukh-dikh-tuh
• blik ≈ blik

A few useful notes:

• g in Afrikaans is usually a throaty sound, not a soft English g
• ui and y sounds in Afrikaans do not match English exactly, so bly may take practice
• ee in deeg is a long vowel

Yes. Afrikaans, like Dutch and German, likes compound words.

• suurdeeg is one word, not two
• lugdig is also one word

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

So learners should get used to seeing long words that are built from smaller meaningful parts.