Look at the following sentences:
(a) Happily in Ryan the park saw yesterday other the students soccer playing with leather yellow expensive a new ball.*
(b) Yesterday Ryan saw the other students happily playing soccer in the park with an expansive new yellow leather soccer ball.
Both of these sentences use exactly the same words but only the second one seems to make any sense. Why is that?
If you said something like, “The words are all jumbled up in the first sentence” or “The order is all mixed up.” You would be quite right. Every language has its own special patterns of systems for arranging words in sentences. A fluent speaker quickly notices if the pattern is not being followed even if they cannot explain why the sentence “sounds wrong”. We sometimes call these patterns rules of word order. The rules for Afrikaans are very similar to those for English, but there are some important differences you should remember. A first language speaker just gets used to the pattern as they learn a language during childhood, but when you learn a new language it is often easier to actually know what the rule is and to learn the rule and to try to pick up the pattern through practice at the same time.
A useful little memory aid for remembering the basic word order in Afrikaans is the word S(v)TOMP(v)I.
The following two video clips explain this in more detail. Watch them carefully (you can even watch them a few times) then use the comment box at the end of the blog to share your thoughts and questions.
Just click on the video link for it to open.
Was dit nuttig (helpful)? Het jy enige vrae? Deel asseblief jou idees en vrae onderaan (below).
As jy dink dat jy dit verstaan het sal jy die volgende sinne kan oorskryf in die korrekte woordorde:
(a) Ukho wys versigtig vir Brendan in die boek die regte antwoord.
(b) Mnr Rich gister die hele klas het moeilike vrae gevra.
(c) My boek het ek by die huis gehaal om in te handig vanoggend.