Thread: Afrikaans diminutive of verbs

Someone once mentioned around here you can make diminutives of Afrikaans verbs. How is this possible? How exactly does it change the meaning? And, if possible, could someone show me some examples?

Fine, keep your Afrikaans secrets to yourself. I'll get on the next boat to South Africa. I'll come back in 20 years knowing more about diminutives of Afrikaans verbs than you could ever possibly hope to know yourself! Hah! Hah! Hah!....

Well, how should we know? Have you seen any South-Africans around here lately? I suppose it just goes like this: add a 'jie' or 'tjie', whatever sounds better, after the stem of the verb. So: slaapjie, loopjie, maakjie. Possibly I'm correct, probably I'm wrong.

Can't you google for an answer?

I heard you people talking about it on the forums, ahem, VendingMachine, ahem, so I figured you knew what you were talking about. I did google for it but I couldn't really find anything. I'm not interested in how exactly you go about making the verb a diminutive, but what kind of meaning this gives to the verb.

Originally Posted by Jasper May

Well, how should we know? Have you seen any South-Africans around here lately? I suppose it just goes like this: add a 'jie' or 'tjie', whatever sounds better, after the stem of the verb. So: slaapjie, loopjie, maakjie. Possibly I'm correct, probably I'm wrong.

Actually no. Afrikaans has a far wider range of suffixes than Dutch and in the case of 'slaap' it would be slaapies but in the case of to come it would be kommentjie, etc. It adds a whole range of emotions and is used for making things sound 'cute', to poor scorn on someone, you name it.

Who is this mysterious "Guest"?

Well, here you go. This is a great link about afrikaans:

http://web.sois.uwm.edu/AFR101/

Interesting language i think. And strongly related to dutch.