Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in South Africa and Namibia. It was originally the dialect that developed among the Afrikaner Protestant settlers, the unfree workers and the slaves who were brought to the Cape area in what is now south-western South Africa by the Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie - VOC) between 1652 and 1705. Most of the first settlers were from the Netherlands, but many others came from Germany, some from France and a few from Scotland and various other countries. The unfree workers and slaves were Malays and Malagasy, in addition to the native Khoi and Bushmen.

Afrikaans
Pronunciation	[afriˈkɑːns]
Native to	South Africa, Namibia
Native speakers	7.2 million  (2016)e19 10.3 million L2 speakers in South Africa (2002)
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Low Franconian Dutch Afrikaans
Writing system	Latin using Afrikaans alphabet Afrikaans Braille
Official status
Official language in	South Africa
Recognised minority language in	Namibia
Regulated by	Die Taalkommissie
Language codes
ISO 639-1	af
ISO 639-2	afr
ISO 639-3	afr
Linguasphere	52-ACB-ba
Regions shaded dark blue represent areas of concentrated Afrikaans-speaking communities

Spoken Afrikaans

Research by J. A. Heese states that until 1807, 36.8% of the ancestors of 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. Especially the non-white component quoted by Heese is very much in doubt.

A sizeable minority of those who speak Afrikaans as a first language are not white. The dialect became known as "Cape Dutch". Later, Afrikaans was sometimes called "African Dutch" or "Kitchen Dutch". Afrikaans was considered a dialect of Dutch until the early 20th century, when it began to be widely known as a different language. The name Afrikaans is simply the Dutch word for African, and the language is the African form of Dutch. In may 2022, Afrikaans was recognized as an indigenous language of South Africa.

Afrikaans Media

• Colin Barends from Cape Town, South Africa speaks Afrikaans.

• Rossouw speaking Afrikaans

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  Obelisks of the Afrikaans Language Monument near Paarl

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  "Dit is ons erns" ("This is our passion"), at the Afrikaans Language Monument

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  The side view of the Pretoria Art Museum in Arcadia, Pretoria, with its name written in Afrikaans, Xhosa and Southern Ndebele.

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  The geographical distribution of Afrikaans in South Africa: proportion of the population that speaks Afrikaans at home.*

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  The geographical distribution of Afrikaans in Namibia.

• A voice recording of Die Stem van Suid-Afrika ('The Voice of South Africa'), the former national anthem, read in poetic form

Related pages

• Afrikaans Language Monument
• Afrikaans-English Dictionary On-line