Learn how to ask "what"
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| 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, we wrapped up our lesson series about common Afrikaans verbs with the verb kom. We’ll now jump into our lessons dedicated to question words in Afrikaans. In this lesson you’ll learn one of the most commonly used question words, and that is wat meaning "what." You’ll see that in Afrikaans, it’s actually very similar to English. |
| So imagine you want to ask your friend "What are you doing?" How will you do it? |
| You will ask Wat doen jy? |
| [slowly] Wat doen jy? |
| Let’s break down this question. |
| Wat is the question word "What" in Afrikaans. |
| Next is jy, which, as you know, means “you.” |
| Finally, doen is the verb “to do.” |
| So, altogether it is Wat doen jy? |
| “What are you doing?” |
| As you may have noticed, we learned a similar question a few lessons ago - Wat gaan jy doen? That means “What are you going to do?” In fact, there are several ways to pose the same question, but the most important thing is that all of them start with wat. |
| The rule is simple - in Afrikaans, wat will always be the first word in the sentence when asking a “what” question. |
| If you want to ask someone’s name, you could ask Wat is jou naam?, which literally means “What is your name?” |
| [slowly] Wat is jou naam? |
| Here, wat is the first word, followed by is which is the same as the English “is.” |
| And finally comes jou naam, which means “your name.” |
| To ask “What is this?” just say - Wat is dit? |
| Again, wat comes first, followed by is which is “is.” Then we just have dit meaning “this.” |
| [slowly] Wat is dit? |
| Also, we can use wat when we ask about people's preferences. For example, Wat is jou gunsteling kos? This means “What is your favorite food?” |
| [slowly] Wat is jou gunsteling kos? |
| I bet you already know how to answer this! You can use the phrase that we’ve already learned - Ek hou van... “I like…” |
| Let’s look at one more use for wat, a question you will likely hear quite often in Afrikaans - Wat wil j hê? This means “What do you want?” |
| [slowly] Wat wil je hê? |
| You will undoubtedly hear it when people are serving you food, in restaurants, cafés, and so on. So remember it in case someone asks. |
| Now it’s time for Annemarie’s Tips. |
| On its own, wat is a heavily used expression in Afrikaans. Like the English equivalent “What?”, this is used when you’re really surprised. But you can also use it when you didn’t understand what somebody just said- Wat? Be careful though; wat? is informal language, so you can’t use it by itself in formal situations. It’s an incredibly practical expression to know when you’re around Afrikaans speakers. |
| In this lesson, you learned the Afrikaans word for “what.” It’s a simple word, yet its usage is wide and you might have a hard time remembering all the different questions you can ask, but don’t worry, you just need practice! In the next lesson, we’ll talk about the Afrikaans question word for "where." |
| Do you know it already? I can promise it’s just as easy as wat! I’ll be waiting for you in the next Afrikaans in 3 minuten lesson. |
| Lekker dag! |
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