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Lesson Transcript

Hallo almal! Ek is Annemarie. Hi everybody! I’m Annemarie. Welcome to AfrikaansPod101.com’s Afrikaans in 3 minuten, the fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Afrikaans.
In the last lesson, you learned how to use the verb gaan, which means "to go" in Afrikaans.
In this lesson, we’ll continue our series dedicated to very common Afrikaans verbs.
The second verb in our series is doen, which means "to do." Doen is used quite a lot, especially in questions.
Imagine your friend asks you Wat doen jy?
That means "What are you doing?"
So if you’re doing your homework, for example, you will say in Afrikaans Ek doen my huiswerk.
[slowly] Ek doen my huiswerk.
So let’s break down this answer.
First we have Ek doen which is "I am doing."
Next comes my, which is the possessive pronoun “my” in English.
Finally we had huiswerk, which is the noun for "homework."
Again, altogether it is - Ek doen my huiswerk.
Note that in Afrikaans, you can use the present tense form to say that you aren’t doing anything.
For example, if someone asks you what you are doing, and you are doing nothing, you can tell them Ek doen niks nie! which literally means "I am doing nothing!" Here we are using the present tense form.
Now, let’s look at some common questions where you can use the verb doen.
Remember gaan from the previous lesson? This time, we’ll use it along with doen to form the question Wat gaan ons doen? which means “What are we going to do?”
[slowly] Wat gaan ons doen?
As you might remember, to direct the question at someone else, you need to change the pronoun. To ask someone “What are *you* going to do?” simply switch ons meaning “we” with jy meaning “you”.
Wat gaan jy doen?
[slowly] Wat gaan jy doen?
If you want to be more specific, you can ask someone what they’re doing tonight, or tomorrow, for instance. Wat gaan jy vanaand doen? means “What are you doing tonight?”
[slowly] Wat gaan jy vanaand doen?
As you can see, the sentence is exactly the same as Wat gaan jy doen? We’ve only added vanaand, which means “tonight.”
You could also say Wat gaan jy môre doen? “What are you doing tomorrow?”
Môre means “tomorrow.” You can simply replace this word with any other word.
Now it’s time for Annemarie’s Tips.
In Afrikaans, we often say Wat gaan jy doen vanaand? It means “What are you doing tonight?” Try asking your friends if you want to go somewhere at night. It will sound very natural – Wat gaan jy doen vanaand? As you can see, in Afrikaans you can place the time, for instance vanaand, both before or after the verb.
In this lesson, you learned how to use the verb doen in different contexts, and I’m sure it will help you a lot! Next time you’ll learn another verb I bet you’ll really like - hou van!
I’ll see you in the next Afrikaans in 3 minuten lesson. Lekker dag!

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