How To Form The Past Tense In Afrikaans
Author
The Afrikaans past tense is incredibly easy to learn.
You don’t have to memorize hundreds of irregular verb conjugations.
Afrikaans relies on a simple, consistent formula to talk about the past.
Most verbs follow one standard rule.
Keep reading and I’ll explain exactly how to form and use the past tense in Afrikaans.
Table of Contents:
The basic rule of the Afrikaans past tense
To make a sentence past tense in Afrikaans, you only need two things.
First, you need the helping verb het.
Second, you need to add the prefix ge- to the beginning of your main verb.
The main verb doesn’t change its spelling.
You simply attach ge- to the front of it.
Let’s look at a basic example using the verb werk (work).
Ek werk.
Ek het gewerk.
Notice how the sentence uses het as the active verb.
The main verb werk moves to the end and becomes gewerk.
Sentence structure and word order
Word order is very important in Afrikaans.
When you use the past tense, the helping verb het always sits in the second position of the sentence.
The main verb with the ge- prefix is pushed to the very end of the sentence.
Everything else goes in the middle.
Ek eet ‘n appel.
Ek het ‘n appel geëet.
In that example, het takes the second spot right after the subject.
The word geëet sits at the very end of the sentence.
Notice the little dots on the e in geëet.
This is called a diaeresis (deelteken in Afrikaans).
It shows that the two e vowels are pronounced as separate syllables.
Verbs that don’t get the ge- prefix
There’s one major exception to the ge- rule.
If a verb already starts with a specific inseparable prefix, you don’t add ge-.
These prefixes are be-, ge-, her-, er-, ont-, and ver-.
For these verbs, you still use the helping verb het in the second position.
However, the main verb stays exactly the same at the end of the sentence.
| Prefix | Afrikaans verb | English meaning | Past tense example |
|---|---|---|---|
| be- | betaal | to pay | Ek het betaal (I paid) |
| ge- | gebeur | to happen | Dit het gebeur (It happened) |
| her- | herken | to recognize | Ek het hom herken (I recognized him) |
| ont- | ontmoet | to meet | Ons het ontmoet (We met) |
| ver- | verstaan | to understand | Ek het verstaan (I understood) |
These prefix rules make speaking Afrikaans much faster.
You simply use the base verb without worrying about adding another syllable.
Past tense of modal verbs
Modal verbs work differently than regular verbs in the past tense.
They don’t use het or the ge- prefix.
Instead, they change their spelling entirely.
This is very similar to how English modal verbs change.
| Present tense | English meaning | Past tense | English meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| kan | can | kon | could |
| sal | will | sou | would |
| moet | must | moes | had to |
| wil | want to | wou | wanted to |
When you use a modal verb in the past tense, your main verb stays at the end of the sentence.
It doesn’t get a ge- prefix.
Ek kon dit doen.
Hy wou gaan.
The past tense of is and het
The two most common verbs in Afrikaans are is (to be) and het (to have).
These two verbs have unique past tense forms.
The past tense of is is was.
This is identical to English.
Ek was moeg.
The verb het can mean “to have” when used as a main verb.
In the past tense, the main verb het changes to gehad.
You still need the helping verb het in the second position.
Ek het ‘n hond gehad.
In this sentence, the first het is the helping verb.
The word gehad is the past tense form of “to have”.
