Afrikaans: A Daughter Language of Dutch 

Hi everyone! If you're currently learning Afrikaans, visit AfrikaansPod101 ( bit.ly/Afrikaanspod101 ) for LOTS of audio and video lessons for students of all levels. A free lifetime account gives you access to lots of content, and then if you want their entire library you can upgrade. For 33 other languages, check out my review! langfocus.com/pod101/ I'm an active member on several Pod101 sites, and I hope you'll enjoy them as much as I do! (Full disclosure: if you sign up for a premium account, Langfocus receives a small referral fee. But if I didn't like it, I wouldn't recommend it!)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I am a South African born, native Dutch speaker. Afrikaans however makes me happy, it is such a joyful language. It just puts a smile on my face - maybe as it reminds me of that beautiful country.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I once saw a vid of Charlize Theron giving an interview with a Flemish reporter. He spoke Flemish to her; she replied in Afrikaans.

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.

Hi guys! Regarding the pronunciation of "Boer", sometimes I use Anglicized words when I'm speaking English. I did look up before I said it: dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/boer 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 also pronounced the name of the language the way I know it to be pronounced in North America. dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/afrikaans I know it sounds wrong to native speakers. This is one of those little dilemmas I encounter when making these videos.

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.

My pen is my wonderland. Word water in my hand. In my pen is wonder ink. Stories sing. Stories sink. My stories loop. My stories stop. My pen is my wonder mop. Drink letters. Drink my ink. My pen is blind. My stories blink. -Claudie Potter If you read the above poem thinking that it is an English poem, you would be surprised to know that the poem is also Afrikaans... word for word.

Hahaha I'm a coloured South African and it's so funny that he thinks the word is offensive but we actually take pride in it. Ons is kleurvol en baie trots daarop😂😆

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.

I am a Dutch native from Amsterdam, and I understand (and speak) Afrikaans without too much effort. However, it takes a while to grasp the differences and get familiar with the accent. When one has reached this point, Afrikaans is fully understandable to Dutch speakers, and probably vice versa. (Maybe with the exception of slang and conversations about typical South African and Namibian things.) I think it is a pity that there is not much interaction between Dutch and Afrikaans speakers. I consider the language as one, not out of nationalist/political reasons but because of the obvious similarities. With more interaction their speakers would connect Southern Africa with Northwestern Europe and the Caribbean, an interesting and very diverse cultural area linked by a language.

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

Fun fact "Afrikaans" is Dutch for "African"

Dutchie here. I can understand Afrikaans speakers almost perfectly. We usually poke fun at Afrikaans, saying it's "Dutch for dummies" because of the simplifications, but it's all in good fun of course. Actually, I do think the simplifications make a lot of sense and I think Afrikaans is an easier language to learn because of it. I think it's a really interesting language that's especially fun to learn for Dutch-speaking people, because it just sounds so familiar to us.

I'm Belgian, mix of Limburgs and Kempisch speaker.. Due to my sport Rugby, I've got a lot of 'Afrikaanse vriende en kennisse'. The difficulty in communication was just the 'dialect' we speak. When we speak formal Dutch it's easier for them to understand, if they speak a little slower we can understand it well. By far Afrikaans is just more straightforward than Dutch and also fun to learn and speak..

I'm Dutch and I just spent some hours watching online biology classes in Afrikaans (great passtime for lockdown weekends). I understood every word on the slides and almost every word the teacher said. But whenever I meet an Afrikaans speaker I have a hard time figuring out what they are saying. I feel like it's partially because they come from a different reality and use a lot of familiar sounding words that refer to concepts from their reality (the only example I can think of is braai). It's a daughter language, but it's like a daughter who moved to Africa when she was 18 and now she's 68, drives a defender and knows how to kill a cobra.

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 😊

Strangely enough, "Amper" is also a Dutch word, but instead of "Almost", it means "Barely"

I am Afrikaans, my brother moved to Holland. He can speak Dutch quite fluent now. If he speaks Dutch to me I can understand the majority of what he is saying.

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.

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

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.

As a “Twee Taalige” soutie, I’ve spent a lot of time in Belgium & Netherlands working on various construction sites with many of the immigrants specifically in Rotterdam, a Dutch Forman once commented to me that I speak Dutch like a black man!!!! What I can say is that on arrival it is very difficult to understand spoken Dutch , but after about 2 weeks of listening there is less “missing” words, after about 2 months I could communicate, have conversation to the point that I could talk to strangers & socialize , but would often have to request to the person I’m chatting with to repeat / slow down. But my language (afrodutch)would have been functional at best and “juvenile”Watching the news - understood 100% After about 4 months, you think in Dutch especially if you are not with other English speakers. Many South Africans believe Flemish is easier - it’s not, as it’s actually a collection of many Dutch dialects south of the Schelde, however, with Antwerps sounding very different to what is spoken in Ghent or Brugge or on the Eastern border or on the border of Wallonia. But if you are Afrikaans speaking, after a few weeks of listening one starts to hear the words and their slight variations due to accent. I would imagine that Afrikaans 1st language speakers would adopt Dutch quicker than 2nd language speakers. As for the lesson, when Afrikaans became formalized in the 20’s, the language custodians actually went to great pains to “reintroduce” Dutch words , as what was being spoken in the north western cape , compared to the Eastern Cape and again compared to the Eastern Transvaal shortly after the Boer war were 3 vastly different “Afrikaans” Dialects that would have been looked down upon in Paarl. It’s been some time since I spent time in the nederlanden en Vlaanderen, so at present I would say that if I returned for any length of time , at first I would just have to listen “again “ I suppose

The way you say "boere". That caught me off guard 😂

You missed a biggie ... the famous Afrikaans double negative!!!

I'm dutch and I was in Morocco. I met people from de westkaap at a gas station and I could understand Them easily and they could understand me easily as well.

When we were on holidays in Madeira we once bought some food in a small shop in a village. The owner was an old lady who had immigrated from South Africa a long time ago. When she heard we were speaking dutch, she started to speak Afrikaans and we had a very nice conversation.

As a Belgian Dutch speaker I can honestly say I understand Cape Town Afrikaans better than Dutch spoken in the north of the Netherlands... looking at you there Groningen.. stop eating your words when you speak =-) I remember when I was younger and was working in a bar as a summer job a family of South Africans walked in and ordered drinks in their language. I understood everything but I had to ask them where they were from because I couldn't place the dialect. That was what it sounded like to me... yet another Dutch or Flemish dialect. When I was in South Africa people there thought my friends and I were South African because we spoke Flemish to eachother. To South-Africans who don't speak Afrikaans it just sounded like Afrikaans. They didn't even believe we were European. Fascinating language, culture and people

I am Dutch and my wife Afrikaans. Afrikaans became my second language easily. Mostly because it's grammar is very easy and you can guess many words correctly by transforming by the 'rules'. From Afrikaans to Dutch is a little harder indeed because it is more complex. There are a lot of words in Afrikaans imported from English and other languages. Interestingly, there are also very old Dutch words that developed differently in Afrikaans, like the word 'oulik', meaning 'nice', referring to the very old Dutch 'Olijk', which nobody uses anymore. And 'kombuis', the 'kitchen', in Dutch only used for the kitchen on a ship. Apart from the differences in spelling and grammar, Afrikaans has a very strong accent, different than any of the strong accents there are in Dutch. Some say it's close to southern Dutch accents like Brabants and Flemish, but that is only because they are also a little 'soft'. Strangely at pronouncing some words Afrikaans is harder than Dutch. Some vowels in Afrikaans has to be pronounced as a 'double vowel'. In Dutch the double 'oo' sounds as one vowel. In afrikaans it sounds like 'oë' or 'owè'. And the the Dutch 'ee', becomes 'ejè' in Afrikaans. So the Dutch 'hoog', meaning 'high', sounds in Afrikaans like 'howeg' (written like it sounds to me as a Dutch guy). It feels like it has 2 syllables, instead of 1.

I'm from South Africa and my first language is English. Both my parents come from Germany which led to me growing up knowing German fluently. Afrikaans is my second language in school and other than some more difficult vocabulary, I am fluent in it too. My understanding of both German and Afrikaans made me curious about Dutch and now I am trying to learn the language by myself.

I am from The Netherlands and it is dead weird to me that I actually don't speak any Afrikaans but can still read and understand your comments😂😭

Thank you for presenting Afrikaans on your channel and creating awareness of our beautiful language.

In my experience I can more easily communicate (in Afrikaans) with a person speaking Flemish (Belgian), than with Dutch. I had a casual conversation with a Belgian guy - both of us were speaking in our native tongues. Where, with a Dutch person I had struggles.

A note on the choice for "good" at 10:00. In the Netherlands we say "goeie" as well, but it is more informal and most common among South Hollanders. Great video!

I had so many questions about Afrikaans and Dutch and how they are historically and phonetically related. You answered every question I had about this subject in one video. You saved me doing a lot of research. Thankyou very much sir and well done !. Bravo

You don't have to apologise for saying "colored". No need for inverted commas. Also, it's spelt Coloured...with a U. I am Coloured. It's not offensive in my country to use that term! Then...Koi San (koi rhymes with toy). Not koh-wee san.....but koy-san. Also, Boer is pronounced "bwer"...rhyming with "were"..We WERE happy to learn Afrikaans (if you are English South African, you'll use this pronounciation). More strictly speaking, Boer is an Afrikaans word, meaning "farmer". In Afrikaans, its pronounced as follows: 1) think "boon" (English word meaning "beneficial"). Now....delete the "n" and replace with "r" 2) in Afrikaans, the letter "r" has a specific pronounciation. Think of how the Scottish might pronounce. it. Loudly, and with a growling sound...like a threatening dog. It should produce a vibrating trill. Rrrrrrrrrrrrr! Boor! (For prnounciation) So remember the proper Afrikaans spelling: Boer!

I'm Dutch but go to a British school my teacher is afrikaans and we can easily understand each over

Paul, a lovely summary of the origin of my language, which I in fact will share with some of my foreign friends. Also, as someone who had to learn Dutch properly because I had a Dutch boyfriend and lived and worked there for a while your summary of the differences is really good! Thank you!

This was a great and informative video. Rock on dude.

As an Afrikaans speaking person new to the Netherlands, I found this video to be very informative and well presented. Thank you!!

As a South African with Afrikaans as my first language, I have to comment that it is easier for me to understand Flemish (Vlaams), also called Flemish Dutch (Vlaams-Nederlands), Belgian Dutch or Southern Dutch (Zuid-Nederlands) than standard Dutch. I was wondering why that would be the case. Interesting, here is a sentence that is spelt exactly the same in Afrikaans and in English: "My pen is in my hand in warm water." It also has exactly the same meaning.

"amper" is a frequently used Dutch word, so.....derived from the Malayan word "hampir"???

Thanks for this very thorough, well-informed and reliable introduction to a fascinating topic! Excellent! (like all your videos btw)

I grew up in South Africa speaking Afrikaans. We had dutch prescribed books at school because it forms part of our heritage. I still remember reading "Het gevaar" ("The danger"). I shudder to think how it would sound to a Dutch person with all our little South Aficans reading _Nederlandse woorde_ in Afrikaans (Dutch words)

Wow! You must have done a lot of research and I learnt things about my own language that I never knew. Thank you!

A comparison of afrikaans Dutch and flemish would be interesting

Echt zo ´n mooi land. Ben er als kind geweest in de jaren 90, en had nog niet veel gezien van de wereld. Dan is het zo vreemd dat er in een land zo ver, dat er zo anders uitziet en de mensen ook, maar er wordt Nederlands gesproken. In ieder geval, ik verstond het. Schok... Maar nog steeds het mooiste land en mensen dat ik heb mogen zien. Liefs.

Many years ago I met an Afrikaner on a trip through the US. I'm from west Netherlands so I guess that shows in my accent and this fellow was a huge, rugby playing bloke. We could understand each other easily (admittedly, for fun I had studied Afrikaans when I was a young teen) and we had so many laughs! He thought that Dutch sounded very "stuck-up" and formal, whereas my idea was that he spoke like a small kid (imagine a 6'4 rugby player!) because of the simple Afrikaans grammar. It was a fabulously funny experience. I've travelled through SA many years later and that again confirmed that it's easy to understand each other. When I studied Afrikaans way back, it struck me that Afrikaans is like having English grammar (where the verbs don't change) with Dutch words. As native Dutch speakers, we particularly love the very descriptive words and those that have maritime origins, such as klip (steen - rock), kombuis (keuken - kitchen) and hijsbakkie (lift - elevator).

Keep up the great job Paul! As a person with 2 mother tongues who speaks three languages, two diallects and learning a new language - your videos are more than inspiring :)

A few years back, while on holiday in the UK, i got into an accident and was send to the emergency room. The doctor who helped me was a South African intern. We both found it surprisingly easier to communicate in our respective native languages ( Dutch / Afrikaans ), even tough we were both well versed in English. It was a strange and funny experience.

Just taken an interest in Afrikaans after RWC19.

Hello,@Langfocus,I really apreciate your work, you have very useful and interesting informations.You are really a model for the other people when it is the talk about doing what they like.I really apreciate your whole work.Many greetings from Romania!

Afrikaans guy here. Through my encounters with Dutch people (we have a few at our university) they found it harder to understand Afrikaans than we did to understand Dutch. Apparently we speak to fast for them to understand most of the sentence, but when we talk allot slower they have no problem understanding us.

Ek is van Namibië af, ek kan Afrikaans praat 😊

Hey, my home language is Afrikaans and I live in South Afrika. The histoy is correct, well that's what we learned here

I'm Dutch, and in the Afrikaans language The Accent is definitely harder to understand, and the writing form is hard to grasp too, but if looked at with the literal meaning of letters, its not too difficult to at least figure out the context, even if not fully understanding it.

As an Afrikaans first language speaker I really enjoyed this, dankie. :)

I'm learning Afrikaans right now and I am having fun with it so far because its a beautiful language along with its fascinating culture ♥️

Afrikaans likely emerged within a generation as a sort of 'compromise dialect' between the non-standard varieties of Dutch and Low Saxon spoken in the Netherlands; it's a myth that all the settlers would have been able to be proficient in standard Dutch. Also there was a very blurred line between what was Dutch, Flemish, Low German, or Central/Upper German in the 1600's. Also keep in mind the Frisian influence. Since there was all this great linguistic diversity from the Dutch settlers, it would be just natural for all these different speakers to come together to form a new koiné. So instead of calling it a creole, call it a koiné, because it's based on the merging of familiar forms. Yes, there were non-Germanic languages that influenced it (not to mention English), but its vocabulary is 95% of Dutch/Low Saxon/Flemish/Frisian/Franconian origin. It's the simplest and most logical explanation, because a new standard language among European settlers was truly a necessity at that time. A creole language is more like a 30/70 borrowing from the lexifying language. In the case of Afrikaans, both the lexifying language as well as the substrate language were Germanic.

Ek s somalian en ek kan praat afrikaans en ek het die taal ses maande geleer en is maklik en noe afrikaans is my derde taal 👌 #hosh

I hope Learners of Afrikaans will follow this lesson well enough, as I found it VERY informative and well prepared, but on the other hand VERY fast.

Exceptionally well researched and presented! (Compliments from an Afrikaans speaker)

I am Afrikaans, and I must say it's much easier reading Dutch, than actually listening to someone talking it - Especially if the Dutch person talks too fast. And yes, their accents play a big part in understanding them, but mostly if you pay attention you can understand what they are saying. Even certain sentences in German you as an Afrikaans speaking person can figure out what is being said as there are some words that are also very similar to Afrikaans words.

I’m Dutch but Afrikaans makes more sense than Dutch from the Netherlands.

Ah! "Register" and important concept/word that I didn't know existed in sociolingustics. I have worked as a Spanish interpreter in many health clinics, and I was trying to explain to coworkers that many times, immigrant patients have no formal education and that therefore even if I, as an interpreter have a high level of proficiency in the language, it is not possible to translate/interpret at times, because of the dramatic difference in language "register", i.e. excessive use of colloquialisms. Nobody believed me! or understood what I was trying to explain! They all thought I was lying to hide my lack of fluency! LOL! Accent is one aspect of intelligibility but so register, and I didn't even know there was a term for that! I was referring to it as "Formal education".

Can you do a video talking about Romanian?

Curious fact: there is one sentence in Afrikaans that stays exactly the same when translated into English. 'My pen is in my hand.' Only the pronunciation changes slightly.

Wow, you had to do an amazing amount of research for this video!

very sad that double negatives didn't get mentioned that's one of the coolest differences between afrikaans and dutch :'(

Wow. I'm Dutch, but after seeing this video I have to admit Afrikaans is actually a more sensible version of Dutch...

This video is very very accurate. a View weeks ago a Prof at Ufs give as a lecture on the history of Afrikaans. And it reflect everything you are saying in this video.

Lol u came down to the comments to find an afrikaanse comment Wel jy het dit gekry lol Edit:Nice amount of likes

To all the Dutch, Afrikaans, Flemish and Frisian speakers here who have posted in English for us, I just want to say a big Thank You that you shared your views and insights in English. A lot of us would never know of these idiosyncrasies had you not written in English. You all could probably have done it all in Dutch so thank you that you didn't!! In many ways it allows us to realise how similar we are to each other than different. Some commentary regarding e.g. Afrikaans and Dutch speakers having greater chances of understanding each other if each spoke slowly and clearly reminded me strongly of similar commentary on Paul's analysis of the "Scots language" with differing vocab, but similar grammar with English. I love Paul's analysis as I feel this is ultimately more important anthropologically and how much we different peoples share and resemble each other. That is MOST important.

I Always thought that Afrikaans was kind of Dutch frozen in the 17th century. By the way the y for ij was also old Dutch spelling. So, I guess I learned a lot from this video.

I'm not even lying when I say one learnt so much from this video than I ever did in high school. Amazing!

I’m Dutch an I have a friend who speaks Afrikaans. We never have problems understanding each other. To me it’s like one of the many Dutch accents.

As a native Dutch speaker i can undertand Die Antwoord lyrics pretty well ;)

Afrikaans speaker here, love the vid! I had Dutch neighbors. We could understand each other if everyone spoke slowly and clearly. Sometimes an explanation of a particular word would be required, but there's enough vocabulary overlap to make this pretty easy. One of the more confusing things between Dutch and Afrikaans is the word "het". In Afrikaans it (usually) means "did" ("ek het gepraat" -> "I did speak"). In Dutch it (sometimes) means "the" ("het huis is groot" -> "the house is big"). If your head is hard-wired to understand a word in a given way, it can really mess with you to see that exact same word being used in a slightly different part of sentences. To me, Dutch sounds like Afrikaans spoken with a very hot potato in the mouth. I've heard some Dutch speakers describe Afrikaans somewhere in between sounding over-articulated like someone reading the news, and over-simplified, like a toddler speaking Dutch. Small correction of something in the video: The Afrikaans word for blanket is spelled "kombers", not "combers".

Native afrikaans speaker here. For me 'register' is a major determining factor. I visit the Netherlands often and, while struggling to understand general conversations in the street, I can easily understand, for example, when parents are talking to their kids. BTW - is 'schyf' Dutch slang for cigarette?

I'm from Flanders, Belgium and I love afrikaans. I had to work one time whit a french speaker who lived 10 years in South-Afrika and we communicated just in afrikaans/flemish. Lovely

What i found is that flams/flemich(Belgium) much close is to Afrikaans than dutch and sometimes almost sound the same.

I am german and I am able to understand nearly everything in Afrikaans because german and dutch are quite similar and the dialect some people speak here in northern germany is even more similar to dutch and Afrikaans😁

Thank you for putting in the Namibia desert at 11:23

I grew up in South Africa, so I learned Afrikaans in school. Having been to Holland and having also had Dutch friends in other countries I have resided, I have found that conversations I have had where I speak Afrikaans and they speak Dutch are fluid and easy. We understand each other perfectly well enough and even enjoy jokes and humor together. I have been told by the Dutch people, that Afrikaans has some funny little words, here and there, that a child might use in Dutch. For example, the word for Matches used to light a fire, in Afrikaans is vuurhoutjies, which means little fire woods. These occasional words are quite amusing to Dutch people,but they still understand their meaning.

Can you do Baluchi? it is said to be the most pure and "oldest" modern iranian language and that it is used to reconstruct ancient iranian languages and proto-iranian. a possible descendant of parthian or median. It is also a sister language to kurdish. So a pretty interesting and important language. love your videos!

I can understand both Dutch and Afrikaans in speech and writing. I'm Chinese but spent 3 years of my life in The Netherlands.

I am a catalan/spanish native speaker and I moved to Belgium about a year ago. I thought learning Dutch would be kinda easy because back in high school I got to a B1 level in German and I speak fluent English, but now here two of my closest friends are South African and I also have met people from all over Germany, Flanders and some regions of the Netherlands, and I hear all of these languages quite often. As a result I understand a bit of every language but in my mind they all mix up and when I want to speak them I don’t know which grammar and vocabulary belongs to what language

Afrikaans nouns don't have grammatical gender like in Dutch (i.e. 'de' and 'het' words become both 'die' words in Afrikaans), but the inflected forms of attributive adjectives in Afrikaans are actually more complicated than in Dutch in my humble opinion. For example, when preceding a noun, 'jonk' becomes 'jong'; 'nuut' becomes 'nuwe'; 'oud' becomes 'ou', and so on. Then there are more regular changes which, nonetheless, have to be learned too such as 'hoog' becoming 'hoë ' , not to mention adjectives that are uninflected like the colors (red, white, green, etc.). Just to add some context to nominal agreement, modern standard Dutch uses both 'goed' and 'goede'. For a neuter noun like ´nieuwjaar', the uninflected form is used between the indefinite article and the noun, e.g. 'een goed nieuwjaar' whereas the inflected form is used with the definite article. For common gender nouns ('de' words) , 'goede' is used both with the definite and the indefinite article. Afrikaans, on the other hand, doesn't distinguish nouns by gender as I said above, but it distinguishes attributive adjectives from predicative adjectives. In the example shown in the video, the attributive form of 'goed' is 'goeie' , so in standard Afrikaans, one would say both '' 'n goie nuwe jaar " and " 'n goie man" whereas in Dutch, one says " een goed nieuwjaar" , but " een goede man" since 'man' is a masculine noun and 'nieuwjaar' is a neuter noun. The predicative form of the adjective is the same though both in Dutch and in Afrikaans, i.e. 'goed'. EDIT: Before the spelling reform of 1946, when grammatical case was still marked in written Dutch, " eenen goeden man" had to be used in the oblique (accusative/dative) case. Technically it is still optional (not "wrong") to use the oblique forms of adjectives/articles with masculine nouns, but nobody does it and those forms are no longer taught in schools. Belgian Dutch dialects , however, still use the indefinite article 'ne' (derived from 'eenen') with masculine nouns, both in the nominative and the oblique case even though. in pre-1946 standard Dutch, 'een' rather than 'eenen' was actually used with masculine nouns in the nominative case.

When I was about 14 years old I learned Afrikaans very well. In college I took Dutch courses and excelled rapidly because the vocabulary was so similar but learned how to conjugate Dutch verbs and use Dutch spelling. Also I had to learn the two noun genders of common and neuter which wasn't difficult. Before learning Dutch I did speak Afrikaans to Dutch and Belgian people and they could understand better after they got accustomed to my accent. One lady thought I was speaking Dutch Low German or Düütsch. I found a slightly wider gap when I learned Bokmål Norwegian and then later studied Nynorsk Norwegian eventhough Norwegians consider them different forms of written Norwegian. Mentally I consider Afrikaans as a dialect of Dutch but for nationalistic reasons the South African people consider it a separate language from Dutch. Dankie en totsiens!!!

I live in Norway. My mother is Dutch and I lived 10 years in the Netherlands so I speak Dutch. I work in a moving company and moved for the South African embassy in Oslo. We had no problems understanding each other speaking Dutch and Afrikaans.

I am a bilingual South African and I learnt so much from your video! Wow, thank you. Wish we learnt this in school.