Word
Sy het talle vrae.
Meaning
She has numerous questions.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Questions & Answers about Sy het talle vrae.
Does sy mean she or his here?
Why is het used here? Is this present tense or past tense?
In this sentence, het means has and the sentence is in the present tense.
The verb hê means to have, and het is the form used in ordinary sentences:
This can be confusing because het is also used as an auxiliary in perfect tense sentences, like:
But in Sy het talle vrae, het is the main verb, not an auxiliary, because it is followed by a noun phrase (talle vrae), not a past participle.
Talle means many, numerous, or quite a few.
It is a slightly stronger or more formal-sounding word than baie in many contexts. It suggests a large number.
So:
You will also very often hear:
Both are correct, but talle can sound a bit more emphatic or formal.
Because Afrikaans usually forms plurals with endings like -e or -s, not with English-style -s added to everything.
The singular is:
The plural is:
This is one of those plural forms that learners simply need to get used to. It may look a little irregular at first, but it is the normal plural of vraag.
So:
No. You do not use an article here.
In Afrikaans, quantity words like talle, baie, sommige, and min usually go directly before the plural noun:
So Sy het talle vrae is correct, not Sy het die talle vrae unless you mean something specific like the many questions in a special context.
In this sentence, yes: it is basically subject + verb + object.
So it matches English very closely:
But Afrikaans also follows the verb-second rule in main clauses. That means if something else comes first, the verb still stays in second position:
Notice that het comes before sy once Vandag is moved to the front.
The sentence breaks down like this:
So structurally it is:
subject + verb + quantity word + noun
That makes it a very useful beginner pattern, because you can swap in other nouns easily: