Afrikaans is one of the official languages of South Africa and one of the national languages of Namibia. There are also millions of people in Africa who speak Afrikaans as a second language.
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 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. For example, Afrikaans nouns do not have gender or case, although they do have singular and plural forms. Adjectives may be inflected when they come before nouns. Verbs are conjugated for tense, but not for person. The conjugation system is generally very regular and simple to learn. The word order is similar to that of Dutch, which differs from English in its placement of verbs and other words. However, Afrikaans 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
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