Unsurprisingly, Afrikaans was found to be most closely related to Dutch. When Afrikaans was compared to 361 Dutch and Frisian dialects, the South-Hollandic varieties were found to be closest to Afrikaans.
An estimated 90 to 95% of Afrikaans vocabulary is ultimately of Dutch origin, so there are few lexical differences between the two languages, however Afrikaans has considerably more regular morphology, grammar, and spelling.
Afrikaans is a creole language that evolved during the 19th century under colonialism in southern Africa. This simplified, creolised language had its roots mainly in Dutch, mixed with seafarer variants of Malay, Portuguese, Indonesian and the indigenous Khoekhoe and San languages.
Lizelle is closer to the truth: Afrikaans is closer to the Dutch spoken during the Dutch Republic (1581-1795) as the Cape was colonised in 1652.
Intelligibility between Dutch and Afrikaans
Although Afrikaans is a daughter of Dutch, Dutch speakers might take some time to understand the language but they can understand Afrikaans. On the other hand, speakers of Afrikaans might not be able to readily comprehend the Dutch language.
Being recognised as a West Germanic language, Afrikaans is first compared to Standard Dutch, Standard Frisian and Standard German. Pronunciation distances are measured by means of Levenshtein distances. Afrikaans is found to be closest to Standard Dutch.
According to the projections that we've made, by 2041 you're going to have 7.1 million Afrikaans speakers. So, there is clear growth. It's not much growth, but it is growing.
It's difficult to generalize what all Dutch people think of Afrikaners, as opinions can vary greatly among individuals. The Dutch people (this is obviously a generalisation) think of the Afrikaners the same way they think of many other nationalities.
Afrikaans and English are the only Indo-European languages among the many official languages of South Africa. Although Afrikaans is very similar to Dutch, it is clearly a separate language, differing from Standard Dutch in its sound system and its loss of case and gender distinctions.
Afrikaans is home language of 2.7-million white South Africans, or about six in every 10 (60.8%) white people. Next up is English, the first language of 1.6-million white South Africans.
Afrikaans descended from Dutch dialects in the 17th century. It belongs to a West Germanic sub-group, the Low Franconian languages. Other West Germanic languages related to Afrikaans are German, English, the Frisian languages, and the unstandardised languages Low German and Yiddish.
The Afrikaans language contains influences and roots from English, Khoi, Xhosa, Asian Malay, Malagasy, San, Portuguese and French; although many of these words do sound extremely different. The dialect in the north-east was a form of Afrikaans and the written standard was developed from this.
Most black South Africans do not speak Afrikaans, although many learn it at school. For older generations, the language still symbolises the brutality of apartheid regime and a time they would rather forget.
How Afrikaans Language Began In South Africa. In obvious irony, the language termed Afrikaans is not indigenous to South Africa. It's a mixture of Dutch and Zulu. The language was born out of Dutch colonization in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The challenging. Grammar: Much like Dutch, Afrikaans grammar is a lot simpler than German. If you're someone who likes the German rules about articles, genders, etc., then you might find Afrikaans a bit frustrating.
Afrikaans is one of the easiest languages for English speakers to learn because--like many of the languages on this list--it's part of the Germanic language family. It's spoken in South Africa, Namibia, and a few other countries.
The Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers of southern Africa.
Dutch and Afrikaans are two closely related languages spoken in South Africa. They share many similarities, but there is also a lot of unintelligible vocabulary between them.
The initial purpose of the settlement was to provide a rest stop and supply station for trading vessels making the long journey from Europe, around the cape of southern Africa, and on to India and other points eastward.
Afrikaans speaking countries
As a percentage of the total population, the largest share of around 14 percent is in South Africa.
isiZulu. IsiZulu is the most widely spoken language in South Africa, the first language of close to a quarter of the population.
Zuid-Afrika has a history of usage: the international vehicle code for South Africa has been "ZA" since 1936. ZAR serves as the ISO 4217 currency code for the South African rand. South African aircraft registration prefixes also start with Z.
And from a geopolitical point of departure, Afrikaans is an indigenous African language of South Africa that came into being and developed in Africa and is the only language that reflects the name of this continent (Kotzé 2018).