Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts.Cookies help us deliver our Services. Afrikaans language, West Germanic language of South Africa, developed from 17th-century Dutch, sometimes called Netherlandic, by the descendants of European (Dutch, German, and French) colonists, indigenous Khoisan peoples, and African and Asian slaves in the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope.
The language is generally used in South Africa and Namibia.

Afrikaans Swedish Danish Dutch English German Faroese Icelandic laspak Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:10 pm GMT. South Africa speaks 11 languages officially: Afrikaans, Ndebele, English, Northern Soho, Swazi, Sotho, Tsonga, Venda, Tswama, Zulu and Xhosa.

Reasons to learn Afrikaans. The language has evolved more than many, foreign words are often, but not always, adopted, and for such a small country there are definitely more regional accents and sayings than is comfortable.


Also mentioned was the fact that they want equality, and since it would be unfair to other native languages to be singled out, the schools decided that it is a better option to use English.Opposition says that it will make the language lose traction in the multi-language country, but some believe that if Afrikaans continues to be spoken as a.In need of a translation or interpreting service?Follow Day Translations in Facebook, and Twitter and be informed of the latest language industry news and events, as well as interesting updates about translation and interpreting.Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.Get exclusive access to industry news, discounts and deals straight to your inbox,The lovable characters from “Despicable Me” are finally having their spin off movie. In 1961, South Africa became a republic and Afrikaans language included Dutch, which was later dropped in 1984. The mutual intelligibility is more apparent in the written rather than the spoken form of Afrikaans and Dutch.Due to the simplifications in spelling and phonetic evolutions of Afrikaans, it became different to Dutch. Because of the simplification of the many of the words and verb forms Afrikaans and the influences of other languages, Dutch speakers would not be able to pick up that many cognates in Afrikaans, but they would still manage to understand the context of the sentences.

For starters, its grammatical structure is much easier to pick up than some other languages. Some of these include:From the Portuguese language are words such as:The Khoisan languages gave some more words, such as:These words can also be found in the Dutch language.From the languages of the Bantu, Afrikaans adapted the following words:As earlier mentioned, the mutual intelligibility between Afrikaans and Dutch is more on the written than the spoken language. You Better be Aware of These 7 Details,The Top Ten Sexiest Languages in the World,13 Things You Need to Know About Dating a Latino.What are the Highest Paying Translation Languages in the World?What Is Chuchotage or Whispered Interpreting?Baie – many, very or much (Dutch – erg or veel),Sambreel – umbrella (Portuguese – sombreiro),Kraal – cattle enclosure or pen (Portuguese – curral),Fundi – subject matter expert or student (Zulu – umfundi),Tjailatyd or Tjaila – to go home (Chaila).

The Dutch and normally found in the middle of some words were changed into the single sound and single spelling of . Aside from the mentioned areas, Afrikaans is spoken in Zimbabwe, Zambia, the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the Netherlands.

Afrikaans is considered as a major language as well because it is the language of commerce along with English. However, the institutions of higher learning argued that they are removing Afrikaans as the medium of instruction but is not abolishing it from the curriculum and will continue to teach Afrikaans as a language course.The universities said that they are accelerating the plans for English to take a more prominent position in the university because English is one of the world’s most spoken languages, a lingua franca around the world and continues to be the language of global business.

There is no distinction between the object and subject form of personal pronouns in the plural form.Another different is that there is no longer any distinction between the present perfect use of the verbs ”to have” (hebben) and ”to be” (zijn).Unlike in standard Dutch, Afrikaans uses double negative. While it still looks and sounds a lot like Dutch, Afrikaans is a lot easier to simply pick up and use, mainly for the following reasons: Grammatical gender has disappeared. There are no noun genders or verb conjugations. Dutch's grammar is a bit more complex than Afrikaans', but they share a lot of the same vocabulary, albeit with slightly different spellings and pronunciations. The mutual intelligibility is more apparent in the written rather than the spoken form of Afrikaans and Dutch. This represents 7 million people. Due to the simplifications in spelling and phonetic evolutions of Afrikaans, it became different to Dutch. But Dutch speakers would not be able to recognize.Despite the number of current speakers of Afrikaans, as a first, second or third language, the South African courts allowed the University of Pretoria (UP) and the University of Stellenbosch (US) to abolish the use of Afrikaans as their medium of instruction.While many people welcomed the court’s decision, many more were against it. -ij has become -y (Dutch. For example:Both Afrikaans and Dutch adjectives are inflected but the inflection is not because of grammatical gender but due to position.The Malay language was brought by the slaves imported by the Dutch East Indies Company. Afrikaans more black than white Afrikaans is a southern African language.