No. 99 in Afrikaans

ma

Mother.

In a sentence

My ma maak die beste pannekoeke.
My mom makes the best pancakes.
Here, 'ma' is used to mean 'mom' or 'mother', referring to a parent.
Hy wil kom, ma hy is te besig.
He wants to come, but he is too busy.
In this sentence, 'ma' means 'but', serving as a conjunction to contrast two clauses.
Sy huil oor die ongeluk, ma sy is nie ernstig beseer nie.
She cries about the accident, but she is not seriously injured.
Similar to the second sentence, 'ma' functions as 'but', showing contrast between two ideas.

Hear it in real podcasts

The recording above is a synthetic voice. Hear how people say “ma” in actual Afrikaans podcasts.

Learn it from shows you like

LangTurbo plays Afrikaans podcasts with a transcript and the English under every line. Tap a word like this one and it tells you what it means right there. For iPhone, iPad and Android.

Get the appDownload on the App Store Get the app Get it on Google Play

Afrikaans books and courses on Amazon (an affiliate link: a purchase through it supports this site).