Afrikaans translation?
Can someone please help me out and give me this in AFrikaans?! "Hi baby, just wanted to write something in Afrikaans so that all of your English friends think i've already learnt your language! Impressive!"
Does anyone here speak Afrikaans?
I speak Afrikaans 1. Yes, Afrikaans has been called kitchen Dutch. I can understand Netherlands almost perfectly. Although my father was born in the Nederlands so I am still of direct linage from there. We have never spoken it at home though and I never really learned to speak it but my cousins from Nederlands just came to visit for a week and I had no problem understanding them. 2. For me spoken Dutch is the easiest only if talked slowly. I can read it aswell but even then it is better if someone reads it aloud. If someone types on the internet in Nederlands I can recognize it and understand it pretty well. 3. No, Afrikaans is not limited to European descend. Actually if you want to be certain someone can speak afrikaans I think it is most likely to be a coloured person. The cape flats is the most Afrikaans area and mostly coloured people. Although not very common that black people speak Afrikaans it is not unfounded. More and more black people are speaking Afrikaans. Most people in South Africa speak two or more languages and Afrikaans is one of the languages tought and most schools. hope that answers your questions
What are the main differences between Dutch and Afrikaans?
Yes, Dutch and Afrikaans are mutually intelligible. The languages are distinctly different, but with some effort, I find that I can understand Afrikaans, and that Afrikaners can understand Dutch.Gilles Castel mentioned how Afrikaans verbs are like Dutch, but simplified in terms of conjugation.Another difference is the double negative. Het is geen goede Nederlands (it’s not good Dutch), mar it is nie sleg Afrikaans nie (it’s “no bad Afrikaans no.”)There are some predictable phonetic differences:Dutch Z may become Afrikaans S: zout/sout for salt.G’s may disappear from the middle of words: lagere school/laëre skool for lower school (grade/elementary/grammar school).Y will replace the modern Dutch IJ ligature: yster/ijzer for iron.The final -en in both languages indicates plural nouns or plural verbs. This becomes -e in Afrikaans: boeren/boere for farmers, or ogen/oë for eyes.Some words will become countrified and lose some syllables: compare ossenwagen/ossewa for an oxcart.Other words will simply not be Dutch: they may be imported from English or French or Portuguese, or they may be Afrikanerisms that are unique to the language. These include: bakkie for pickup truck, baie for very, and jôl for “a night of drinking, gambling, smoking dope, and cheap sex.”Occasionally, the same word will have different meaning. If an Afrikaner “moet aftrekken” while driving, he means he needs to exit the road. In Dutch, “aftrekken” means to masturbate. On the other hand, “fokken” is Dutch for “breeding animals” with no obscenity meant; in Afrikaans, it means what it sounds like in English: fucking.TL;DR: The differences are:Simplified verbs in AfrikaansDouble negatives are good Afrikaans grammarSome words are pronounced differently due to sound change and shortening of long wordsSome words are found in Afrikaans but not Dutch.Some words have different meanings in Afrikaans from in Dutch.
Is Afrikaans a dialect of Dutch or is it a separate language?
I had a friend in college from Suriname who said he spoke both languages. I was talking about him with another friend and my friend suggested it was a dialect and not a language. I'm just curious. I have no personal stake in this question. I obviously speak neither.
Is Afrikaans a growing language?
Afrikaans will NEVER die out in South Africa. There are way too many blacks who speak afrikaans. Mostly the blacks from the Free State rural areas and gauteng also speak or at least understand afrikaans. The blacks who are in the cape cities and those from the old transkei/ciskei are more likely to speak and understand english. And a large percentage of the Coloureds speak afrikaans only. Afrikaans is also spoken in Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland. With about 6 million native speakers in South Africa, or 13.3 percent of the population, it is the third most spoken mother tongue in the country. It has the widest geographical and racial distribution of all official SA languages, and is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language. While the number of total speakers of Afrikaans is unknown, estimates range between 15 and 23 million
Is Dutch the same as Afrikaans?
No, but very close.I understand Dutch about 100%. When I listen to Afrikaans I can figure out some, sometimes even most, of the things they are saying, but it’s definitely another language sharing the same roots. I think that after a couple of weeks in South-Africa I would understand it a 100% and even be able to speak it.Both languages sound different and have somewhat different rules. The differences go beyond the accent. They are therefore considered as different languages. On the other hand, Belgian Dutch and Dutch Dutch also sound different, sometimes very different, but they share the same rules, and are therefore considered the same language spoken with different accents.
Is it easy for an Afrikaans speaker to learn German?
With some practice, you will recognize a lot of the vocabulary. Check out some German Wikipedia articles to see how much you can understand right away: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare I've just had a look at the Shakespeare article in Afrikaans, and I can understand large parts of it without ever having learnt Afrikaans (I'm German).* Important differences between Afrikaans and German vocabulary include: s/z (German) - t (Afrikaans/English); e.g. German: Wasser (English: water) f/pf (German) - p (Afrikaans/English), e.g. German: Apfel (English: apple) ch (German) - k (Afrikaans/English), e.g. German: Koch (English: cook) The question of learning German grammar might be a bit more complicated. * Just to give you an idea of how much Afrikaans or Dutch a German can understand without having learnt either language :) , I've retranslated the first two paragraphs of the Shakespeare article in Afrikaans into English (without a dictionary or "Google Translate", obviously): William Shakespeare (baptised April 26, 1564 – died April 23, 1616)[1] was an English poet and dramatist and is regarded as the most important writer in the English language and the most ... dramatist of the world. [2] He wrote approximately 38 plays and 54 sonnets ... poems.[3] Shakespeare was already a ... writer during his lifetime, but after his death he became more and more popular and his work .. increasingly ... prominent cultural figure.[4] He is regarded .. as the national poet of England [5], and is sometimes called the "Bard of Avon" there (the love poet of Avon), or simply the "Bard",[6] or the "Swan of Avon".[7] Othodox scholars believe that Shakespeare penned most of his works between 1586 and 1612, although the precise dates and the chronology of the plays that are attributed to him have been the subject of much debate, as has the authorship of some of his works. He is held to be one of the ... dramatists who excelled both in comedy and in tragedy and his plays combine entertainment [?] with complex characterication, poetic splendour [?] and deep philosophy.