Afrikaans: A Daughter Language of Dutch

Special thanks to Joop Wijnandts for his Dutch voice recording, and Ernest Mostert for his Afrikaans voice recording. And thanks to Nils Van Dessel for his last minute recording.

Special thanks to: BJ Peter DeLaCruz, Michael Cuomo, Nicholas Shelokov, Sebastian Langshaw, Brandon Gonzalez, Brian Michalowski, Adrian Zhang, Vadim Sobolev, Yixin Alfred Wong, Raymond Thomas, Simon Blanchet, Ryan Marquardt, Sky Vied, Romain Paulus, Panot, Erik Edelmann, Bennet, James Zavaleta, Ulrike Baumann, Ian Martyn, Justin Faist, Jeff Miller, Stephen Lawson, Howard Stratton, George Greene, Panthea Madjidi, Nicholas Gentry, Sergios Tsakatikas, Bruno Filippi, Sergio Tsakatikas, Qarion, Pedro Flores, and Raymond Thomas for their generous Patreon support.

Source for history of Khoisan displacement: “South Africa: A Country Study” by Article by William H. Worger and Rita M. Byrnes. Library of Congress.

Music:
Main music: “Erykah” by Otis McDonald.
Outro music: "Tarantula" by MK2.

[Langfocus]

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[klaushinze]

I speak English German Afrikaans and Zulu. Afrikaans is by far the best language to swear in. It is very descriptive

[Danillo]

I'm a Coloured South African, and was recently in Italy, I met a guy from the Netherlands, we spoke English initially, and when he ask if I'm from South Africa, we Automatically switched over to Dutch and Afrikaans, I was amazed that we could both understand the other person's language, so in opinion, it's relatively easy for the two speakers to understand each other.

[thesillypig]

For me, a dutch person, Afrikaans is a cooler version of Dutch. I love it when people speak Afrikaans. I also like the accent when South Africans speak english.

[fragly]

I'm a native Afrikaans speaker, our Afrikaans teacher had us read an entire Dutch book just for the hell of it
it's insane how easy it was, it's hard to read out loud though and she had to explain some words a bit but other than that it was pretty much smooth sailing the entire time

I must commend you on your research, our teacher who speaks both languages told us exactly what you described in this video

[Langfocus]

I could have said it with Afrikaans pronunciation, but it sounds pretty odd to me when someone is speaking in English and suddenly switches to another language's phonology for one particular word. It sounds like "showing off" makes a lot of people cringe, from what I know.


I know it sounds wrong to native speakers. This is one of those little dilemmas I encounter when making these videos.

[marcoscholtz]

I am a native Afrikaans-speaker who has developed an appreciation for Dutch. Ik begrijp Nederlands heel goed. In the beginning, Dutch sounded like an Afrikaans person who has had way too much to drink.

[davidvdw]

Being a native speaker, growing up speaking Afrikaans, I am very impressed with your video. Really good job sir. Baie, dankie!

[marlyketteringham]

As a South African, I find it much easier to understand Flemish than Dutch

[philipjacobson]

I'm an Afrikaner living in France and I must admit travelling to the Netherlands always feels a bit like home from home. I can read just about everything and understand most of what they say.

[stijnvanende]

My mothertongue is Flemish and we used to have Afrikaans speaking visitors from South Africa stay with us for several days. We could understand each other very well and I have the impression that Flemish is even closer to Afrikaans than the modern standard Dutch.

[zakariadavis]

As and Afrikaans speaker (on the Cape Flats), I remember that my Grandparents (and older generations) spoke an Afrikaans that was nearer to Dutch than the Afrikaans of today. I am from Malay descent and I have some books (kitabs) written from over 100 years ago in Arabic script, but the words are Dutch, (there are many of such books in some families),
I also know that Afrikaans spoken by different (coloured/ mixed race) communities around the late 1800's and early 1900's were more Dutch- like and less Afrikaans sounding, this is illustrated by some of the words (in Arabic script) still found in some of the books written by my ancestors (malay slaves etc) for eg, Maantag instead of Maandag, the Afrikaans word for Monday of course. The Afrikaans as spoken on the Cape Flats is slowly dying as most of the younger people prefer to speak English now. Pity that my people despise their own language instead of embracing it. Sad.

[damerval]

I am French, but I learned Afrikaans when I went to school in South Africa in the 80's. Everything you said was true as far as I know, except perhaps that I somehow missed you saying that Afrikaans was an official language along with English in the entire country, which means all children who went to school studied both languages as compulsory subjects, and all road signs and other public inscriptions were in both languages. Depending on the region, a third language was also on all signage and taught at school - whichever predominant African language was spoken there. I was living in Bloemfontein, so the third language was Suthu. Had I lived in Natal it would have been Zulu, in Transvaal Swazi and in the Cape province Xhosa.
Although all children went to school by law, black children went different schools that white children. I went to Grey College, which was a whites only, boys only school. Suthu was taught at Grey College but not compulsory. Obviously, this was before the end of apartheid. Things were different in Cape Town and the Cape Province though as once I moved there I found that apartheid laws were widely ignored. This was not the case in Bloemfontein or Johannesburg as I'm given to understand.
I was struck by your pronunciation of "boer" which you said as "boe-uh" and which I have always heard everywhere pronounced as "boor". I won't go as far as saying you are wrong, but I never heard that Afrikaans word pronounced any other way than "boor" by speakers of any language in South Africa.
Upon returning to Europe in the late 90's I found that my Afrikaans enabled me to understand two languages that I had never learned and still do not speak: Dutch and Flemish. When I spoke Afrikaans in Holland and Flanders, I was also well understood. It's an eerie feeling to converse with someone and you're both speaking clearly different languages but you understand almost everything the other says.
Another interesting fact - in South Africa in the 80's, the news and many talk shows on national TV were presented in a bilingual or trilingual way. In other words, the presenter would speak one or two sentences in English, then switch to Afrikaans, then back to English, etc. It wasn't that the presentation was delivered, then translated: rather, the content would be spoken in both languages at once, in alternating sentences or paragraphs. On the homeland channels (Lesotho, Kwazulu, Swaziland) presenters would use all 3 languages to deliver their presentations, with a lean on the language of the homeland of course. I have never experienced anything similar anywhere else.
People often talk about the "south african accent" in English. There are many south african accents, at least 3 that I can remember in English: The "English" accent which lies somewhere between New Zealand English and British English that everybody knows, the "Afrikaner" accent typical of a native Afrikaans speaker speaking English (De Klerk had a typical version of that one) and the African accent, fairly uniform across the territory, spoken by Black people born or living in South Africa or one of the homelands. It is thus possible for a person to say the exact same English phrase in 3 completely separate accents, all of which are definitively South African. Nor can the "Black" south African accent be mistaken for the Congolese accent for instance, or the accents from Liberia or the Central African Republic.

[MyJcw]

I knew someone who could speak three Germanic languages(English, German, and Swedish). He found himself reading an article in a language he had never encountered before but could understand near-perfectly. It turned out to be Afrikaans.

[Tobitobiify]

Afrikaans was the easiest language I've ever learned. German is my mother tongue and I learned Dutch by reading magazines. It took only three weeks for me to learn enough Afrikaans to have normal conversations with Afrikaans speakers. For me Afrikaans is like Dutch with a much easier grammar and a simpified pronunciation.

[jacostrauss]

I am a native Afrikaans speaker and understand Dutch and Flemish quite well. I have visited the Netherlands and Belgium and found they understood me well when I mimicked their accent 😊

[DonMas-car-pone]

I'm Dutch 🧡 and love the simplifying of the Dutch language into Afrikaans 🇿🇦 dankie!

[adrianw]

Afrikaans is my home language and I worked in the Netherlands in 2014... At first it was difficult to understand Dutch, but after about 1 month I could understand Dutch perfectly. Yes, perfectly. Understanding it was easier than speaking it though, since I constantly wanted to reply in Afrikaans and even though I was aware of the multiple differences in grammar, using 'heeft', 'zijn', 'wij', 'heb', 'ze', 'we' etc in casual conversations were a challenge. :) But at least the Dutch found it (extremely) funny haha...

The Dutch are also, in my opinion, different from Afrikaans speaking people in that they are much more upfront from the get go... While Afrikaans people tend to speak about 'koeitjies en kalfies' before getting to the business side of things. The Dutch will have no problem telling you exactly what they think, while Afrikaans people wait a bit before ambushing others with their views. :) Afrikaners need to be really pissed off before telling you exactly what they think of you (which might happen since we're not so patient always..)

And don't expect an invite to a braai in the future if we had an argument with you... ;) Because after an argument you're a poephol... :P

Also, Afrikaners are more hardworking, while the Dutch utilise their time, imo, much better. The Dutch don't work nearly as hard as the average Afrikaner family. I also think Afrikaner men are much more 'manly' than Dutch men (sorry it's true haha) - and Afrikaner females put a bit more effort into their daily attire (must be because of the cycling, it's very impractical to cycle in a pencil skirt). The Dutch are very practical people, have a great sense of humour and are masters in utilising time to the best of their abilities (I repeat, masters.)

They have great beer and pannekoeken, and delicious appeltaartjes met slagroom. And they have beautiful museums... AND they sell South African wine in the Albert Heijn!! :D So I like the Dutch, and I always hear Dutch tourists in Cape Town speaking about the weather back home lol... ;) So we have our similarities.

Ons is byna identities in taal en in sommige gewoontes, tog heeltemal verskillend.

[chantelhowelldogan]

As a flight attendant i come accross many dutch nationals and they always ask me where i am from as they can understand when i speak afrikaans. we will end up having long conversations in our own native languages on board. its really amazing. #TrotsAfrikaans

[peterkeijsers]

I am native Dutch, and a few years ago I commented on a FB post of a fellow Dutch member. An native Afrikaner then reacted to my comment that he found it great that I knew Afrikaans. Both him and me in our own written native tongue, but we could easily understand each other's comments. Then, a few years later, I had to assist a South African artist (Afrikaans speaking) at a local music festival in my hometown. We could understand each other with relative ease. So I dare to say that to native speakers Dutch and Afrikaans are mutually intelligible, both written and spoken.