Afrikaans is one of the official languages of South Africa, where it is spoken by over 6 million native speakers. An additional 10 million people also speak Afrikaans as a second language. It is also one of the national languages of Namibia.
The Afrikaans language is descended from the 17th and 18th century Dutch dialects that were spoken by early colonists in Africa. As such, it is considered a member of the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is therefore a distant relative of English.
Afrikaans vocabulary still shares approximately 85% of its vocabulary with Dutch, with the result that people who speak Afrikaans and people who speak Dutch can often manage basic conversations. However, Afrikaans has picked up additional vocabulary from English, French, Malay, Malagasy, Khoi, San, and Bantu languages, among others.
The Afrikaans language uses the same letters as Dutch and English, although not all them are pronounced the same as in the other languages. Afrikaans spelling is also simpler and more phonetic than that of Dutch, so many words that sound the same in both languages are not written identically.
Afrikaans grammar has become simpler and more regular than Dutch, possibly as a result of contact with various creole languages. Afrikaans nouns do not have gender or case, although they do have singular and plural forms. Afrikaans adjectives may be inflected when they come before nouns. Afrikaans verbs are conjugated for tense, but not for person. The conjugation system is generally very regular and simple to learn. The word order in Afrikaans is similar to that of Dutch, which differs from English in its placement of verbs and other words. Afrikaans also uses a double negative, which is not found in standard Dutch.
Regular practice is important to learn to speak Afrikaans well. That's why good
Afrikaans software programs can be so useful. It's easier than ever to learn Afrikaans and to begin to speak Afrikaans with the language resources and Afrikaans language software from Transparent Language, such as
Languages of the World. We wish you the best of luck in your endeavors to learn Afrikaans!
