Afrikaans (South Africa) style guide

Use this page for Afrikaans written for readers in South Africa. Follow the shared voice, mechanics and localization review guidance. Dutch spelling or syntax does not automatically apply to Afrikaans.

Address and meaning

Use jy and jou in product help and ordinary support, with a courteous, neutral tone. An imperative can be direct without a pronoun: Stoor die lêer. A relationship that calls for u needs consistent address throughout. Asseblief can soften a request when appropriate; do not add it to every control label or replace a request with a stronger obligation.

Use ons when the company or support team acts. An automatic operation does not need an invented human speaker. Keep the actual component and the person who must act. A short message should still distinguish what the application does from what the reader does.

Choose familiar words such as probeer and oor when they preserve the meaning. Closing a document, leaving an application, shutting down a computer and signing out are different actions; toemaak, verlaat and afsluit are not universal replacements. Keep the approved term and the actual action. Follow interface actions when klik op or another specific input is required.

Preserve what can be changed and when. Jy kan verander wanneer bywerkings geïnstalleer word lets the reader change the installation timing. It does not mean “you can change it as soon as updates are installed.” A feature that helps protect something does not guarantee protection. Keep required gesture reproduction distinct from merely watching a demonstration.

People and ownership

Use a role or natural rephrasing when a generic person would otherwise receive an unsupported gender. Keep a restriction such as ’n Gebruiker met die toepaslike regte kan wagwoorde verander. A collective or plural must not replace one person when number matters. Keep a real person's name, pronouns and self-description.

Grammatical possession need not imply personal gender: die rekenaar se hardeskyf names a component of the computer. Repeat the noun if a pronoun's reference is unclear. Use jou lêer, die gebruiker se lêer or die lêer according to the actual owner, not according to a rule that removes every possessive.

A preference expressed by a user may naturally say Onthou my wagwoord. An instruction about another user's password does not mean the same thing. Establish who speaks and whose password is stored before changing third person to first person.

Keep a relevant family relationship, disability or responsibility. Ouer can be a useful generic term, but it cannot preserve every distinction carried by ma or pa. Use the shared accessible-content guidance and a person's preferred description rather than a mechanical identity-replacement list.

Articles, pronouns and negation

Write the indefinite article as ’n, with an apostrophe followed by a lowercase n. At the start of a sentence, capitalize the following word: ’n Lêer is oop. An opening quotation mark in ‘n is the wrong shape. Check smart-quote conversion and automatic capitalization in the actual editor.

Retain an article or demonstrative when it identifies the object: die lêer, hierdie lêer, ’n lêer. A product name can sit in a grammatical phrase such as die program FontLab. Do not drop every article before a loanword or translate every demonstrative as a definite article.

Use wat in an ordinary relative clause: die lêer wat oop is, die persoon wat die lêer stoor. Constructions with a person can use wie after a preposition or with possessive se, as in die persoon met wie jy praat and die persoon wie se lêer oop is. Preserve the relationship rather than mapping every English who to one form.

Keep the full negative construction where required: Die lêer is nie oop nie. A negative instruction can be Moenie die lêer uitvee nie. Other constructions differ, as in Geen lêer is oop nie or the compact label Geen toegang. Do not delete a final nie to save space, and do not add two occurrences mechanically to every negative phrase. Its position can affect what is negated.

Compounds, verbs and prepositions

Write established compounds as words: lêernaam, wagwoord, rekenaarinstellings. Use a hyphen when spelling requires it, including a compound with an initialism such as USB-poort. A long compound can be rephrased if the relationship becomes clearer. Do not insert spaces between every component or let a text editor replace a compound hyphen with a dash.

Keep normal inflection and diacritics: lêer, lêers, kopieë. Check unfamiliar borrowed words and abbreviation plurals against current Afrikaans references. A form accepted for one abbreviation does not establish the plural of every loanword or the spelling of every decade.

Separable verbs depend on the construction: Maak die lêer oop and om die lêer oop te maak. Werk die program by and om die program by te werk show the same need to check the whole phrase. Keep verbs grammatical within each clause; moving them mechanically next to a subject can break the sentence.

Use the preposition required by the action: klik op die knoppie, koppel aan die netwerk, migreer data van X na Y. Preserve source and destination in an import or migration instruction. Choose a complete, idiomatic construction rather than replacing each occurrence of an English preposition separately.

Keep tense, possibility and permission distinct. Kan can express ability or possibility, mag can express permission, and sal can locate an event in the future. Context controls the choice. Do not turn a future possibility into a certainty or convert a past failure into a present limitation merely to shorten a message.

Messages and variables

Choose wording for the actual state:

Function	Example
Action label	Stoor
Instruction	Stoor die lêer.
In progress	Die lêer word gestoor.
Completed	Die lêer is gestoor.
Failed attempt	Die lêer kon nie gestoor word nie.
Current impossibility	Die lêer kan nie gestoor word nie.

A fragment such as Onvoldoende geheue can work when the surrounding interface supplies the failed operation. A question keeps its question mark: Wil jy voortgaan? Include a cause, restart requirement or recovery action only when known. Follow interface feedback.

Keep everyone affected and the possibility of loss: As jy die rekenaar nou herbegin, kan jy en ander mense wat hierdie rekenaar gebruik, ongestoorde werk verloor. Preserve kan; do not promise that work will be lost or recovered. The actor must remain clear when the sentence is shortened.

Check what each placeholder can contain. Die lêer {name} kan nie oopgemaak word nie. supplies a known noun and leaves the filename intact. A person, list or object type needs its own construction. Preserve token names, format specifiers, escapes and markup exactly: %1!s! must not become %1s!. Reordering depends on the parser, not on a language guide's generic description of %s or %c.

Test counts in whole messages: 1 lêer is gestoor, 2 lêers is gestoor, Geen lêers is gestoor nie. The plural noun and negative construction carry information even though is stays the same. Use the product's message mechanism rather than appending an ending blindly. Follow messages and variables.

Capitalization and abbreviations

Use sentence case for new headings and labels: Stoor as, Maak oop, Gevorderde opsies. Keep proper names and exact interface labels intact. An initial ’n remains lowercase. Preserve diacritics on capitals too: LÊERS, KOPIEË. Check the rendered result as well as the source text.

Use established abbreviations sparingly: bv., asb., ens., d.w.s. A list need not use both bv. and ens. to signal that it is illustrative. Do not abbreviate every word to make a label fit. A unit symbol such as mm, kg or s is a different category and has no abbreviation period.

Keep familiar Afrikaans forms where they identify the intended entity, as in VSA or VK, and preserve technical abbreviations such as USB or DPI. Explain an unfamiliar abbreviation when useful; a mandatory English expansion plus Afrikaans expansion plus abbreviation can overwhelm a short message. Do not invent an expansion or infer pronunciation from capitalization alone.

Punctuation, numbers and line breaks

Use commas to clarify clause structure and scope. Distinguish a defining relative clause from an aside rather than inserting a comma before every wat. Use a colon for an explanation or a grammatically introduced list. A proper name or complete sentence following it keeps the capitalization it needs.

Use typographic “…” quotation marks, with ‘…’ for a quotation inside another. The apostrophe in ’n has its own function and orientation. Put no spaces just inside parentheses. Keep straight quotation marks where code or an input format requires them. Use en for the ordinary conjunction in prose while preserving a literal ampersand in a name or code.

Use a decimal comma and nonbreaking spaces for ordinary digit grouping: 1 526,75. A rand amount can be R1 526,75, with no space between R and the first digit. Keep the numeric value and currency identity intact. A software field or identifier with another required syntax retains that syntax.

Separate a unit from its value with a nonbreaking space: 12,5 mm, −18 °C. Use U+2212 for the minus and U+00B0 for the degree sign. Write duim when spelling out inches, as in 5 × 7,2 duim; dm is the SI symbol for decimetres and must not be substituted for inches. No conversion is implied by changing the notation.

Distinguish compound hyphens, range punctuation and mathematical signs. For an unambiguous range in prose, bladsye 3 tot 6 can avoid a cramped string of marks. Use an ellipsis where the text calls for one, and reproduce an existing control's punctuation exactly. Keep version syntax such as 1.2.0 and filenames literal. Nonbreaking spaces should prevent unwanted breaks, not bind whole paragraphs into one line.

Keyboard wording and speech

Name the actual key on the intended keyboard, such as Enter, Ctrl or spasiebalk. Explain a numeric-keypad distinction when needed. Verify access keys, shortcut combinations, supported characters and focus behavior in the product. Preserve platform differences such as Command versus Ctrl; inherited shortcut lists do not establish current behavior.

Use natural Afrikaans pronunciation and an approved reading of names. A familiar acronym may be read as a word; an unfamiliar one may need spelling out. Keep every character needed to reproduce a URL, version or command, including punt for a meaningful dot. Follow the shared audiovisual guidance for captions, timing and essential visual information.