Afrikaans is a West Germanic language mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia. It was originally the dialect that developed among the Afrikaner Protestant settlers and the indentured or slave workforce brought to the Cape area in southwestern South Africa by the Dutch East India Company (Dutch language: Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie - VOC) between 1652 and 1705. A relative majority of these first settlers were from the United Provinces (now Netherlands), though there were also many from Germany, a considerable number from France, a few from Scotland, and various other countries. The indentured workers and slaves were Malays, and Malagasy in addition to the indigenous Khoi and Bushmen. ISO 639 is one of several international standards that lists short codes for language names. ... SIL International is a non-profit, Christian, scientific organization with the main purpose to study, develop and document lesser-known languages for the purpose of expanding linguistic knowledge, promoting world literacy and aiding minority language development. ... This list of languages is alphabetical by English name. ... West Germanic is the largest branch of the Germanic family of languages, including such languages as English, Dutch, and German. ... Afrikaners are white South Africans of predominantly Calvinist Dutch, German, French Huguenot, Friesian and Walloon descent who speak Afrikaans. ... Protestantism is a general grouping of denominations within Christianity. ... Settlers are people who have travelled of their own choice, from the land of their birth to live in new lands or colonies. ... The Buxton Memorial Fountain, celebrating the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire in 1834, London. ... City motto: Spes Bona (Latin: Good Hope) Province Western Cape Mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo Area  - % water 1,644 km² 0. ... Dutch colonial possessions, with the Dutch East India Company possessions marked in a paler green, surrounding the Indian Ocean plus Saint Helena in the mid-Atlantic. ... Dutch (  Nederlands[?]) is a West Germanic, Low German language spoken by around 24 million people, mostly in the Netherlands and Belgium. ... // Events April 6 - Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck establishes a resupply camp for the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope, and founded Cape Town. ... Events Construction begins on Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire, England. ... This article is about the Dutch United Provinces. ... Royal motto: Nemo me impune lacessit (Latin: No one provokes me with impunity) (Scots: Wha daur meddle wi me) Scotlands location within the UK Languages with Official Status1 English Gaelic Capital Edinburgh Largest city Glasgow First Minister Jack McConnell Area - Total - % water Ranked 2nd UK 78,782 km² 1. ... Malays (Dutch, Malayo, ultimately from Malay: Melayu) are a diverse group of people living in the Malay archipelago and Malay peninsula in South East Asia. ... The Khoikhoi (men of men) or Khoi are a division of the Khoisan ethnic group of south-western Africa, closely related to the Bushmen (San). ... the right to live there in perpetuity. ...

Research by J. A. Heese indicates that until 1807, 36.8% of the ancestors of the White Afrikaans speaking population were Dutch, 35% were German, 14.6% were French and 7.2% non-white (of African and/or Asian origins). Heese's figures are questioned by other researchers, however, and especially the non-white component quoted by Heese is very much in doubt. 1807 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ...

A sizeable minority of those who spoke Afrikaans as a first language were not white. The dialect became known as "Cape Dutch". Later, Afrikaans was sometimes also referred to as "African Dutch" or "Kitchen Dutch". Afrikaans was considered a Dutch dialect until the early 20th century, when it began to be widely recognized as a distinct language. The name Afrikaans is simply the Dutch word for African, i.e. the African form of the Dutch language. This article does not cite its references or sources. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999 in the...

History

Afrikaans is linguistically closely related to 17th century Dutch dialect spoken in North and South Holland, and to modern Dutch by extension. Speakers of each language can make themselves easily understood by speakers of the other. Other less closely related languages include the Low Saxon spoken in northern Germany and the Netherlands, German, and English. Cape Dutch vocabulary diverged from the Dutch vocabulary spoken in the Netherlands over time as Cape Dutch absorbed words from other European settlers, slaves from East India and Indonesia's Malay, and native African languages. Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. ... (16th century - 17th century - 18th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 17th century was that century which lasted from 1601-1700. ... Holland is a region in the central-western part of the Netherlands. ... Low Saxon (in Low Saxon, Nedersaksisch, Neddersassisch) is any of a variety of Low German (Nedderdüütsch in Low Saxon) dialects spoken in northern Germany and the Netherlands. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Malays (Dutch, Malayo, ultimately from Malay: Melayu) are a diverse group of people living in the Malay archipelago and Malay peninsula in South East Asia. ...

The linguist Paul Roberge suggests that the earliest 'truly "Afrikaans"' texts are doggerel verse from 1795 and a dialogue transcribed by a Dutch traveller in 1825. Printed material among the Afrikaners at first used only proper European Dutch. By the mid-19th century, more and more was appearing in Afrikaans, which was very much still regarded as a spoken regional dialect. The first Afrikaans grammars and dictionaries were published in 1875 by the Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaners (Society for Real Afrikaners) in Cape Town. Official government proclamation of Afrikaans as a distinct language from Dutch came in 1925. The official languages of the Union of South Africa were English and Dutch until that time. Dutch was replaced as an official language by Afrikaans. 1875 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... The Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaanders (Society for Real Afrikaners) was formed on Saturday August 14, 1875 in the town of Paarl by a group of Afrikaans speakers from the Western Cape region. ... City motto: Spes Bona (Latin: Good Hope) Province Western Cape Mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo Area  - % water 1,644 km² 0. ... 1925 was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Besides vocabulary, the most striking difference from Dutch is its much more regular grammar, which is likely the result of mutual interference with one or more creole languages based on the Dutch language spoken by the relatively large number of non-Dutch speakers (Khoisan, Khoikhoi, German, French, Cape Malay, and speakers of different African languages) during the formation period of the language in the second half of the 17th century. In 1710, slaves outnumbered free settlers, and the language was developing among speakers who had little occasion to write or analyse their new dialect. A Creole is a language descended from a pidgin that has become the native language of a group of people. ... Map showing the distribution of the Khoi-San languages. ... Khoikhoi is a language spoken in South Africa by a million people. ... The Cape Malays are an ethnic group who can claim descent from political dissidents and their families brought to South Africa from Indonesian and Malaysian starting from 1667. ...

There are a lot of different theories about how Afrikaans came to be. The Afrikaans School has long seen Afrikaans as a natural development from the South-Hollandic Dutch dialect, but has also only considered the Afrikaans as spoken by the whites. The Afrikaan School has also rejected all alternative ideas.

Most linguistics scholars today are certain that Afrikaans has been influenced by creole languages based on the South-Holland Dutch dialect. It is very hard to find out how this influence took place, since there is almost no material written in the Dutch-based creole languages: only a few sentences found in unrelated books often written by non-speakers. A Creole is a language descended from a pidgin that has become the native language of a group of people. ...

Although much of the vocabulary of Afrikaans reflects its origins in 17th century South-Hollandic Dutch, it also contains words borrowed from Indonesian languages, Malay (the oldest known written Afrikaans uses Arabic script and was intended for use among Cape Town's Muslims), Portuguese, French, Khoi and San dialects, English, isiXhosa and many other languages. Consequently, many words in Afrikaans are very different from Dutch, as demonstrated by the names of different fruits: Motto: Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Old Javanese/Kawi: Unity in Diversity) National ideology: Pancasila Indonesia Anthem: Indonesia Raya Capital Jakarta 6°08′ S 106°45′ E Largest city Jakarta Official languages Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia, a standardized dialect of the Malay language) Government President Democratic republic Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono Independence  - Declared - Recognised... The Malay language, also known locally as Bahasa Melayu, is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people who are native to the Malay peninsula, southern Thailand, Singapore, central eastern Sumatra, the Riau islands, and parts of the coast of Borneo. ... Map showing the distribution of the Khoi-San languages. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Xhosa is one of the official languages of South Africa. ...

* from Malay pisang (a word that is known to the Dutch through their Dutch East Indies history)
** suur = sour (which is essentially the same as the Dutch word 'zuur'. The Dutch East Indies, or Netherlands East Indies, (Dutch: Nederlands Indië) was the name of the colonies set up by the Dutch East India Company, which came under administration of the Netherlands during the 19th century (see Indonesia). ...

Grammar

See separate article on Afrikaans grammar. // Overview Afrikaans grammar is the study of the grammar of the Afrikaans language. ...

Orthography

Written Afrikaans differs from Dutch in that the spelling reflects a phonetically simplified language, and so many consonants are dropped (see also the grammar section for a description of how consonant dropping affects the morphology of Afrikaans adjectives and nouns). The spelling is also considerably more phonetical than the Dutch counterpart. A notable feature is the indefinite article, which, as noted in the grammar section, is "'n", not "een" as in Dutch. "A book" is "'n Boek", whereas in Dutch it would be "Een boek". (Note that "'n" is still allowed in Dutch; Afrikaans uses only "'n" where Dutch uses it next to "een". When letters are dropped an apostrophe is mandatory.) Other features include the use of 's' instead of 'z', hence South Africa in Afrikaans is written as Suid-Afrika, whereas in Dutch it is Zuid-Afrika. (This accounts for .za being used as South Africa's internet top level domain.) The Dutch letter 'IJ' is written as 'Y', except where it replaces the Dutch suffix -lijk, as in waarschijnlijk = waarskynlik. .za is the Internet country code top-level domain ( ccTLD) for South Africa. ... The following is a list of currently existing Internet Top-level domains (TLDs). ... Suffix has meanings in linguistics, nomenclature and computer science. ...

Comparison with Dutch, German and English

• voël is also the West Flemish word for "bird".

Sociolinguistics

Afrikaans is the first language of approximately 60% of South Africa's whites, and over 90% of the "Coloured" (mixed-race) population. Large numbers of black, Asian, and English-speaking whites also speak it as a second language. This article does not cite its references or sources. ... In the South African context, the term Coloured refers to various people of mixed Bantu, Khoisan, and European descent (with some Malay or Indian ancestry, especially in the Western Cape) together with some racially pure Khoisans. ... Asians in South Africa constitute two per cent of South Africas population, and most are of Indian origin, although there is also a small Chinese community. ...

It is also widely spoken in Namibia, where it has had constitutional recognition as a national, not official, language since independence in 1990. Prior to independence, Afrikaans, along with German, had equal status as an official language. There is a much smaller number of Afrikaans speakers among Zimbabwe's white minority, but most left the country in 1980. 1990 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1980 is a leap year starting on Tuesday. ...

Many South Africans living and working in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom are also Afrikaans speakers.

Afrikaans has been influential in the development of South African English. Many Afrikaans loanwords have found their way into South African English, such as "veld", "braai", "boomslang", and "lekker". A few words in standard English are derived from Afrikaans, such as "trek", "spoor", and, of course, apartheid. South African English is a dialect of English spoken in South Africa and to some extent, in neighbouring countries with a large number of Anglo-Africans living in them, such as Namibia and Zimbabwe. ... The braai (abbreviation of braaivleis, Afrikaans roasted meat) started out as a major social tradition amongst the Afrikaner people of Southern Africa, though the tradition has since been taken up by South Africans of all ethnic backgrounds. ... In South African history, the Great Trek was an eastward and north-eastward migration of the Boers, descendants primarily of immigrants from western mainland Europe. ... A segregated beach in South Africa, 1982. ...

In 1976, high school students in Soweto began the rebellion that contributed to the end of apartheid and the whites-only government of South Africa. This has been credited to that government's decision that Afrikaans rather than English be used as the language of instruction in non-White schools. However, many historians argue that the language issue was largely a smokescreen. Afrikaans is more widely spoken than English (and is, in fact, spoken by a majority of residents in two of South Africa's nine provinces), so most children may not have objected to the use of Afrikaans per se. Rather, it was the further directive, within the instructional language directive, that non-White (i.e., Black, Coloured and Indian) South African children be denied instruction in all but the most basic topics of mathematics, sciences, fine arts, etc., on the theory they would never need to know those subjects because they would never have occaision to use such an education. See History of South Africa. 1976 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Johannesburg, including Soweto, from the International Space Station Soweto is an urban area in Johannesburg, in Gauteng province South Africa whose northern boundary begins about 15km south-west of central Johannesburg. ... A segregated beach in South Africa, 1982. ... For Colonisation and Recent History, see Colonisation and Recent History of South Africa. ...

Under South Africa's multiracial Constitution of 1994, Afrikaans remains an official language, but there are now nine other official languages, in addition to English, with which it has equal status. The new dispensation means that Afrikaans is often downgraded in favour of English, or to accommodate the other official languages. In 1996, for example, the South African Broadcasting Corporation reduced the amount of television airtime in Afrikaans, while South African Airways dropped its Afrikaans name Suid-Afrikaanse Lugdiens from its livery. Similarly, South Africa's diplomatic missions overseas now only display the name of the country in English and their host country's language, but not in Afrikaans. 1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ... 1996 is a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is the state owned broadcaster in South Africa, and was for many years the monopoly, controlled by the white minority National Party government. ... South African Airways (SAA), known simply as South African on their aircraft colour scheme, is South Africas largest domestic and international airline company. ... Seal on the building of German Embassies. ...

Although these moves have angered Afrikaans speakers, the language has remained strong, with Afrikaans newspapers and magazines continuing to have wide circulations, and a pay-TV channel in Afrikaans called KykNet being launched in 1999 and an Afrikaans music channel, MK89, in 2005. KykNet is a South African television channel, which broadcasts in Afrikaans. ... 1999 is a common year starting on Friday Anno Domini (or the Current Era), and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ...

Although Afrikaans has diverged from Dutch over the past three centuries, it still shares 85 per cent of its vocabulary with that language, and Afrikaans speakers are able to learn Dutch within a comparatively short amount of time. Native Dutch pick up Afrikaans even more quickly, due to its simple grammar. This has enabled Dutch companies to outsource their call centre operations to South Africa, thereby taking advantage of lower labour costs. A call centre (Commonwealth English) or call center (AmE) is a centralized office of a company that answers incoming telephone calls from customers or that makes outgoing telephone calls to customers (telemarketing). ...

Afrikaans phrases

Afrikaans is a very centralized language, meaning that most of the vowels are pronounced in a very centralized (i.e. very schwa-like) way. There are a lot of different dialects and different pronunciations — but the transcription should be fairly standard. The International Phonetic Alphabet. ... Phonetic (pho-NET-ic) is a nationwide voicemail-to-text messaging service available for most digital mobile phones in which a subscriber is provided a custom voice mailbox for the purpose of receiving all incoming voice messages as actual transcribed text for reading via short messaging (also known as SMS... In computing, Unicode provides an international standard which has the goal of providing the means to encode the text of every document people want to store on computers. ...

• Hallo! Hoe gaan dit? [ɦɑləu ɦu xaˑn dət] Hello! How are you?
• Baie goed, dankie. [bɑjə xuˑt dɑnki] Very good, thanks.
• Praat jy Afrikaans? [prɑˑt jəi afrikɑˑns] Do you speak Afrikaans?
• Praat jy Engels? [prɑˑt jəi ɛŋəls] Do you speak English?
• Ja. [jɑˑ] Yes.
• Nee. [neˑə] No.
• 'n Bietjie. [ə biki] A little.
• Wat is jou naam? [vat əs jəu nɑˑm] What is your name?
• Die kinders praat Afrikaans [di kənərs prɑˑt afrikɑˑns] The children speak Afrikaans.

Two sentences that are written the same in Afrikaans as in English:

• My pen was in my hand ([məi pɛn vas ən məi hɑnt]) My pen was in my hand.

• My hand is in warm water. ([məi hɑnt əs ən varəm vatər]) My hand is in warm water.

Additional information

• Afrikaans is the only language that has a monument erected to it. The Afrikaans Language Monument ("Afrikaanse Taalmonument") is located near the Western Cape Province town of Paarl.
• The letters c, q and x are rarely seen in Afrikaans, and words containing them are almost exclusively borrowings from English, Greek or Latin. This is usually because words with c or ch in Dutch are transliterated as k or g in Afrikaans.
• Special letters used are è, é, ê, ë, î, ï, ô, û. Sometimes ʼn is considered a single character.

Taal Monument in Paarl, Western Cape, South Africa The Afrikaans Language Monument (Afrikaanse Taalmonument) is the only monument in the world dedicated to a language. ... Paarl Rock Paarl is one of the three oldest European settlements in South Africa and forms part of the Western Cape Province. ... Transliteration in a narrow sense is a mapping from one system of writing into another. ...

See also

• Afrikaans Language Monument
• List of Afrikaans language poets
• Aardklop Arts Festival, Potchefstroom

Taal Monument in Paarl, Western Cape, South Africa The Afrikaans Language Monument (Afrikaanse Taalmonument) is the only monument in the world dedicated to a language. ... Peter Blum Boerneef Breyten Breytenbach P.W. Buys Jan F.J. Cilliers T.T. Cloete Sheila Cussons Ingrid de Kok Johann de Lange Hans du Plessis I.D. du Plessis Eitemal Elisabeth Eybers H.A. Fagan Joan Hambidge Daniel Hugo Ingrid Jonker Olga Kirsch W.F. Knobel Uys Krige Antjie... The tone of this article is inappropriate for an encyclopedia article. ... Potchefstroom Flag Potchefstroom is a large academic town with the North-West University, situated on the banks of the Mooi River (literally beautiful river), 120 km west-southwest of Johannesburg in the North West Province of South Africa. ...

Reference

Roberge, P. T., 2002. Afrikaans - considering origins, in Language in South Africa, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom. ISBN 0-521-53383-X

External links

Afrikaans language edition of Wikipedia

• List of free online resources for learners
• The Ethnologue: Afrikaans
• Afrikaans-English-Afrikaans Online Dictionary
• Afrikaans - English Dictionary: from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition.
• Radio Sonder Grense (radio without borders) - Afrikaans radio online.
• [1] [Radio Pretoria] - Afrikaans radio online.
• [2] Similarty between Afrikaans and various dialects of modern Dutch.
• Die Roepstem: "What is Afrikaans?" Afrikaans & Dutch web-site, with largest Afr.-Du. wordlist.
• Afrikaans Sample at Language Museum
• List of online Afrikaans-related resources
• Afrikaans Spelling Checker for Microsoft Office
• Afrikaans Spelling Checker for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla
• Afrikaans edition of OpenOffice.org
• Afrikaans edition of the Mozilla Firefox web-browser
• Project to translate Free and Open Source Software into Afrikaans
• Afrikaans English Dictionary from Webster's Online Dictionary - the Rosetta Edition