many universities outside South Africa, for example in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Russia, and the United States. Grammar In Afrikaans grammar, there is no distinction between the infinitive and present forms of verbs, with the exception of the verbs 'to be' and 'to have': In addition, verbs do not conjugate differently depending on the subject. For example, Only a handful of Afrikaans verbs have a preterite, namely the auxiliary ("to be"), the modal verbs, and the verb ("to think"). The preterite of ("may") is rare in contemporary Afrikaans. All other verbs use the perfect tense, het + past participle (ge-), for the past. Therefore, there is no distinction in Afrikaans between I drank and I have drunk. (In colloquial German, the past tense is also often replaced with the perfect.) When telling a longer story, Afrikaans speakers usually avoid the perfect and simply use the present tense, or historical present tense instead (as is possible, but less common, in English as well). A particular feature of Afrikaans is its use of the double negative; it is classified in Afrikaans as and is something that is absent from the other West Germanic standard languages. For example, English: He can not speak Afrikaans. / He can't speak Afrikaans. Both French and San origins have been suggested for double negation in Afrikaans. While double negation is still found in Low Franconian dialects in West Flanders and in some "isolated" villages in the centre of the Netherlands (such as Garderen), it takes a different form, which is not found in Afrikaans. The following is an example: * (lit. I want not this do not.) English: I do not want to do this. * Compare with , which changes the meaning to "I want not to do this." Whereas emphasizes a lack of desire to act, emphasizes the act itself. The was the Middle Dutch way to negate but it has been suggested that since became highly non-voiced, or was needed to complement the . With time the disappeared in most Dutch dialects. The double negative construction has been fully grammaticalised in standard Afrikaans and its proper use follows a set of fairly complex rules as the examples below show: A notable exception to this is the use of the negating grammar form that coincides with negating the English present participle. In this case there is only a single negation. English: He is in