Language/Afrikaans/Grammar/Common-Errors

Common Errors in Grammar in Afrikaans Language

• Afrikaans tense is not necessarily expressed. (Kolbe,2012)

• • Only three tenses exist in Afrikaans: present, past, and future. Conditional, perfect, and pluperfect tenses are difficult to contextualize and utilize correctly.

• • Ex. He would have been going had it not been raining. These use of tenses would be hard for a L2 to use correctly.

• There is no verb conjugation depending on the tense.

• • As a basic rule the auxiliary verb ‘het’ and ‘ge’ are used before the verb to denote past tense. (Donaldson, 1993)
  • ‘sal’ is added before the verb to denote future tense.
  • Ex. Ek loop. - I am walking. Ek het geloop. - I have walked. Ek sal loop. - I will walk.

• There is more emphasis on the action in a sentence. Duplication of the verb to show emphasis or continuity instead of using a specific adverb. (Botha, 1998)

• • This can leads to unnecessary duplication in English.
  • Ex. krap- means ‘scratch oneself’ krap krap krap means ‘scratch oneself vigorously’

• Tendency to use double negatives in L2 if directly translating from L1. (Markey,1982)
  • Ex. "You must not do that" Jy moet dit nie doen nie. A L2 speaker might first say: “You must not not do that.” (C. Kolbe, personal communication, February 22, 2012)

Source

• http://www.ritell.org/resources/documents/language%20project/afrikaans.pdf