The Afrikaans language is one of South Africa’s official languages and a large proportion of the local population uses it as their first or second language. It is still taught in schools.Some believe that Afrikaans is a dying language, however, it remains spoken all over the country and respected for its origins.
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Is Afrikaans an endangered language?
According to the experts, a total of seven languages in South Africa can be classed as ‘endangered’. However, Afrikaans is noticeably missing from this list. The dialects in trouble of falling out of favour for good include local, little-known language sets.
How widely spoken is Afrikaans in South Africa?
With about seven million native speakers in South Africa, or 13.5% of the population, it is the third-most-spoken language in the country. Estimates of the total number of Afrikaans speakers range between 15 and 23 million.
| Afrikaans | |
|---|---|
| Native speakers | 7.2 million (2016) 10.3 million L2 speakers in South Africa (2002) |
Do black South Africans understand Afrikaans?
Most black South Africans do not speak Afrikaans, although many learn it at school. For older generations, the language still symbolises the brutality of apartheid regime and a time they would rather forget.
What is the least spoken language in South Africa?
IsiNdebele
IsiNdebele is the least spoken of South Africa’s 11 official languages, and confined mainly to Mpumalanga and Gauteng. It is an Nguni language, like isiZulu, isiXhosa and siSwati.
Are Afrikaners friendly?
Afrikaners are, by nature, a friendly, loyal, and gregarious—but also no-nonsense—bunch of people. The latter may be due to their Dutch heritage, a nation known for its straightforward manner.They’re usually trusting, and their nature is to be generous and helpful when they can be.
How close is Afrikaans to Dutch?
90 to 95%
As an estimated 90 to 95% of Afrikaans vocabulary is ultimately of Dutch origin, there are few lexical differences between the two languages; however, Afrikaans has a considerably more regular morphology, grammar, and spelling.
Is Afrikaans a beautiful language?
“Afrikaans is helluva nice language,” he says. “It is so expressive and flows so beautifully.Olga Sema, a Motswana who traverses the country for the ATKV to promote Afrikaans among non-mother tongue communities, says the “perception around the world is that Afrikaans is the language of the apartheid oppressors”.
Are Afrikaans white?
Afrikaners make up approximately 5.2% of the total South African population, based upon the number of white South Africans who speak Afrikaans as a first language in the South African National Census of 2011.
1691 estimates.
| Ancestry | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Dutch | 66.67% |
| French | 16.67% |
| German | 14.29% |
| Scandinavian, Belgian | 2.37% |
Is Afrikaans a white language?
Afrikaans was constructed as a “white language”, with a “white history” and “white faces”.
What do the Dutch think of Afrikaners?
The majority of the Dutch understand that JUST LIKE IN ANY OTHER GROUP OF PEOPLE: some are racist whilst the vast majority are not. The Dutch people (this is obviously a generalisation) think of the Afrikaners the same way they think of many other nationalities.
Why did the Afrikaners hate the British?
Some Afrikaners don’t like to speak English.The English were also losing because they were getting very bad sunburns from the hot South African sun. They didn’t take this into account when they came to fight a war in South Africa. This is why some Afrikaners call English Whites Rooineks (Rednecks).
Do Coloured people speak Afrikaans?
According to the census, over three-quarters of the coloured population speaks Afrikaans as a home language. Afrikaans is first language of 3.4-million coloured South Africans, or about seven to eight in every 10 (75.8%) coloured people.
Is Afrikaans easy to learn?
Afrikaans is actually quite simple to learn, and many language learners consider it one of the easiest languages to master. Most Germanic languages have two or even three genders, but Afrikaans, like English, uses a singular gender. The verb conjugations were removed, simplifying the language even further.
Does everyone in South Africa speak English?
Most South Africans speak English, which is fairly ubiquitous in official and commercial public life. The country’s other lingua franca is Zulu.The Sotho languages – Tswana, Sotho sa Leboa and Sotho – also have much in common. Many of South Africa’s linguistic groups share a common ancestry.
How many languages can Ramaphosa speak?
English
Does Australia speak Afrikaans?
Today, Afrikaans is still widely spoken in the Cederberg region, and many of the elders of local families don’t speak any English at all. They gather at the farm stall on sunny days and chat in Afrikaans as they sip their rooibos tea.
Is Flemish same as Afrikaans?
Because Flemish is written at the same way as Dutch. But people does speak it with a different accent. Afrikaans is spoken at the same way, but it is written different(/easier).Look at West Flemish ( a dialect of Dutch) and look at Afrikaans ( a separate language) and work out which one is closer to Dutch.
What is considered rude in African countries?
Pointing At Things
Pointing at something or someone with the index finger is usually considered rude or just straight offensive – it’s not something you want to do.
Can a Dutch understand Afrikaans?
Although Afrikaans is a daughter of Dutch, Dutch speakers might take some time to understand the language but they can understand Afrikaans.The spelling is also different from the Dutch standard. The mutual intelligibility is more apparent in the written rather than the spoken form of Afrikaans and Dutch.
Are Afrikaners and Boers the same?
The Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers of southern Africa.In 1833, the Boers began an exodus into African tribal territory, where they founded the republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
