Interesting facts about the language

Afrikaans has over twelve million speakers. Around 6.4 million people speak it as their first language – and about the same number have learned Afrikaans as a second language. The majority of Afrikaans speakers live in South Africa, where Afrikaans is an official language along with ten other languages. Numerous speakers also live in the neighboring countries: Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, and Lesotho. From a linguistic perspective, Afrikaans is a relatively "young" language. Its origins date back to the 17th century, when Dutch colonists began building a supply station for the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope.

The Dutch settlers naturally brought their language with them. However, this changed so drastically in the following years that it was soon considered a separate language, spoken from then on in South Africa. While many words in Afrikaans originate from the imported source language, Dutch, many other languages also left their mark. For example, the various Bantu and Khoisan languages of South Africa's indigenous population played a significant role in shaping the vocabulary of the new language. The settlers at the Cape of Good Hope continually expanded their territories. To cultivate ever larger settlement areas, they brought in slaves from present-day Indonesia, the island of Madagascar, and Angola. These slaves spoke Malay or a form of Creole Portuguese. Both languages also found their way into the vocabulary of the emerging Afrikaans. In 1806, the British conquered South Africa and established a colony of the British Crown, as a result of which English also influenced Afrikaans, which was already widely spoken in South Africa. In 1875, the “Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners”, the “Society of Upright Afrikaners”, was founded. Its aim was, among other things, to raise the status of Afrikaans in society and to establish the language as a written language.

The first newspaper in Afrikaans appeared in the year after the society was founded. This was followed by literary publications and the first works on Afrikaans grammar. With the founding of the Union of South Africa, Afrikaans became the country's official language and has remained so to this day. Differences between Dutch and Afrikaans can be found on several levels: In general, it can be seen that Afrikaans has undergone many simplifications over the course of its development. Afrikaans pronunciation and spelling have evolved and become simpler, moving away from Dutch. For a German, Afrikaans may be somewhat easier to learn (compared to Dutch), as Afrikaans spelling is strongly influenced by pronunciation, and the same applies vice versa. Other differences can be found in the vocabulary: During its development, many other languages have influenced Afrikaans: European settlers brought German and English with them, Malay and Portuguese were spoken by slaves in South Africa, and many Bantu and Khoisan languages were already present when the Dutch established their settlements in the Cape. All of these languages have left their mark on the Afrikaans vocabulary.

But most of the differences can be found when comparing the grammar of the two languages. Afrikaans, for example, has completely eliminated verb inflection. In Dutch, however, verbs are inflected. Another special feature of Afrikaans is double negation. As a rule, a negative sentence in Afrikaans always ends with "nie" (German: nicht). Furthermore, the clauses to which the negation refers are often marked with their own negative pronoun. This creates a double negation typical of Afrikaans.