Afrikaans is a language spoken in South Africa, with over 12 million speakers. It originated from Dutch and is similar to English. It is spoken in neighboring countries and in pockets around the world. Afrikaans developed from a specialized dialect of Dutch spoken by settlers and slaves. It was recognized as a language in the 20th century and is understood by most Dutch speakers. The language has many similarities to Dutch and English, but also includes words from other languages. It has simpler phonetics than Dutch and obtains most of its vocabulary from Dutch.
Afrikaans is a language predominantly spoken in South Africa. Derived from Dutch, it shares many similarities with this language and is therefore also similar to English in many respects. There are more than 12 million speakers, of which about half speak it as a first language and the other half as a second or third language.
The major population base for Afrikaans is in South Africa where it is spoken by a sizable portion of the population. It is also spoken by a substantial number of people in neighboring Namibia. It is also spoken by small numbers of people in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Outside of Africa there are pockets of speakers found in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
Although the Cape region has been known to Europeans since the late 15th century, it was first settled by Europeans when the Dutch began establishing bases in South Africa in the mid-17th century. The Dutch brought in large numbers of Protestant settlers to manage the lands, under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company, and enslaved the locals and imported other slaves to work the land. These settlers and slaves began speaking a specialized dialect of Dutch, which formed the basis for what is now recognized as Afrikaans.
Afrikaans has been spoken freely as a dialect, and perhaps as a number of different dialects, for many decades. In the early 19th century, the language began to supplant Malay in Muslim schools and began to be written using the Arabic alphabet. For many years, although Afrikaans was widely spoken among Afrikaners, the language of the written word for non-Muslims continued to be standard Dutch. In the mid-19th century it also appeared in various religious journals and treatises, using the Latin script. In the late 19th century, the language began to be treated more seriously and a number of grammars and dictionaries were published.
In the early 20th century, Afrikaans continued to develop credibility and began to be studied more widely by linguists. In the 20th, the government recognized it as a language proper, rather than simply a dialect. Dutch is usually fully understood by speakers of Afrikaans, while Afrikaans is understood by most Dutch speakers after some study.
Similarities between Dutch and Afrikaans abound. For example, the Dutch word for nine is negen, while in Afrikaans it is nege. The Dutch for “bird” is vogel, while in Afrikaans it is voël. The Dutch word for “welcome” is welkom, the same in the other language. In other cases, Afrikaans may seem closer to English, especially in spelling. For example, the Dutch word for “mine” is mijn, while in Afrikaans it is simply mine. In other cases, the vocabulary seems to have little connection to either Dutch or English. For example, the Dutch word for giraffe is giraf, while the Afrikaans word is kameelperd. In this case the word draws instead from the Dutch words for “camel”, kameel, and for “horse”, paard.
In general, Afrikaans has simpler phonetics than Dutch, eliminating many consonants and sticking to a more intuitive phonetic structure. The language obtains more than 85% of its vocabulary directly from Dutch, with the rest being composed mainly of Portuguese, Malay, Bantu and Khoisan words.
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