Afrikaans Language l Can West Germanic Language Speaking Countries Understand Each Other? 

im from cape town and i can safely say 50% of cape town speaks afrikaans

Funny how the American girl just let her imagination flow, coming up with whatever comes to her mind 😂

Fun fact. His Afrikaans accent is from the Cape and sounds different than what Afrikaans sounds like in the Center and Northern parts of South Africa

Did I understand it correctly? He said there isn’t many Afrikaans speaking people in Cape Town ? Because thats very untrue.

Probably the most significant word there mentioned by Zeno, but not spoken about, was the word “braai”, as in grilling or barbecuing - a truly well-known word among South Africans! Dankie! Lekker bly!

I hope we get a Dutch vs Afrikaans video like the one with Brazil/Portugal Portuguese where they have to communicate in their respective languages and talk about the differences. That would be really interesting!

Whenever I hear Afrikaans as a Dutch person I almost feel that they simplified Dutch, even improved it. They made it easier to learn, took away some of the unnecessary stuff.

Not alot of people that speak afrikaans in Cape Town. Broer, waar de moer kom jy vandaan. Ons praat veral Afrikaans in Kaapstad.

God bless the American 😂 She's a trooper even though she understood the least.

It was so fun to play this game with you all 😂❤ thanks for having me!

Thank you so much for having me!! 💗 It was so much fun, hope I didn't let my Dutchies down 🤭

So good see someone from South Africa in the video, especially as the main member , i've been always hearing how afrikaan is similar to dutch , and also Englsih is one of the official languages of South Africa , wonder what people from there speak to each with 11 official languages

as a west-flemish speaker, the words he uses are almost identical to ours in a way. Our dialect sounds VERY similar to some things he says.

In Afrikaans we don't really say partye (unless we're talking about political parties, politieke partye). We would say partytjies (literally parties, but in the diminutive). In some dialect people do translate from English to Afrikaans on the fly, when they don't know the word, and that is more common in Cape Town. One other interesting difference between Afrikaans and Nederlands, is when we say "hou van" it means we like something. In Dutch it means you love it (the emotion is more intense). In Dutch you will say, Ik hou heel veel van mijn dochter, I love my daughter very much. In Afrikaans, Ek hou baie van my dogter, means I like my daughter very much. Which is a weird thing to say. So we'd say, Ek is baie lief vir my dogter.

Schwarz and Swartz aren’t uncommon surnames in the USA. For those saying there is no connection between English and other Germanic languages there is a word in English “swarthy” that means dark colored but it’s not heavily used. And sometimes it’s not that the English word changed as much but that the German word did. While some languages like German, Dutch, Afrikaans, and Flemish use Pferd, paard, perd, and paard respectively, these translations would have been more similar to the horse we say today, if we were a few centuries back. Back in the Old High German days, speakers used to say ros or hros to refer to the horse.

For Dutch speakers Afrikaans is matter of getting used to the accent and some typical South African or Namibian words. Dutch speakers who know something about their language or people who are using a dialect will understand even easier. All words used are Dutch in origin, ‘perd’ is dialectical Dutch but it is ‘paard’ in Standard Dutch. ‘Party’ is from ‘partij’ (same pronunciation), and is used in the word ‘kinderpartijtje’ for example. Swart is in Standard Dutch ‘zwart’, but in the western part of The Netherlands and Suriname it is more often pronounced as ‘swart’ as people don’t really differentiate s/z, g/ch, and f/v. Just like in Afrikaans.

2:10 So here you have a classic example of Dutch dialect vs Standard Dutch. Afrikaans has adapted many Dutch dialect words. That is why some people in The Netherlands understands Afrikaans better than for example people coming from other regions. Because sometimes the Afrikaans words are just Dutch dialect words and not Standard Dutch.

I'm South African and I found his Afrikaans accent a bit strange, not typical - maybe because of living in Korea for most of his life?

He forgot to translate one of the things he likes to do in his free time: braai. It's similar to a barbeque, but over coals, not flames, and also refers to the social gathering of people.

I just met a South African guy on the train a few days ago and he speaks Zulu! 😃

Cape Town actually has the largest population of Afrikaans speakers

I'm very happy to finally have Afrikaans in here because I'm Dutch, wanting to learn proper Afrikaans (even though I can already understand most of it) but the language isn't very popular so I can't find places to learn it like duolingo Plus Zeno is such a chill dude, love his personality!

Disappointed in myself that 🇺🇸 Sophia did better than me 😂 I’m Indonesian, currently learning German, so I was able to guess words like perd (German: Pferd), ses (sechs), swart (schwarz). But when he introduced himself and talked about his hobby I couldn’t get anything 😂 I share 🇩🇪 Svea’s sentiment, I think I would’ve done better if I can read what he said in written form.

Yes!!! This is what I was hoping for. I do think the English speaker might not have had much of a fun time. A Danish, Swedish, Norwegian or Flemish person would have been a better match.

The equivalent of "perd" in English is "palfrey," both from the same Latin word for "spare horse." "Swart" is "swarthy" in English. So we do have the equivalents, but they aren't really used much.

This was great! I think the ladies did a great job! Also, 'party' usually does refer to a sort of democratic party in South Africa. But, for a social gathering, we would usually say 'partytjie' instead. But, in SA, many do speak differently because of diversity. This was great to watch, however. :)

The reason why the american lady thought other answers is because english , even though is a germanic language , is different from german , dutch and also afrikaan , as i studied a little of german i knew some similar words from afrikaan like "Schwarz" in german is a similar sound to "Swart" in afrikaan

Also the Afrikaans guy speaks a bit of a Capetonian dialect on second language level (as he said rightfully). Standard Afrikaans would be easier to understand for the Dutch and perhaps German speakers, while the Capetonian would be easier for the English speaker.

surprised to see how little some South Africans know about South Africa, Cape Town has a very large coloured community that speak Afrikaans as a first language and most locals there understand Afrikaans. In Durban and KZN compared to the rest of the country there's almost nobody that speaks Afrikaans as a first language. Black, white, coloured or Indian we don't know that language.

In next time if the channel do this put peoples that speaks dutch, german, swiss german and luxemburguish together and repeat more theses videos. Gonna be magic and beautiful 😻❤️. It's was nice to see it🍻🍻🍻🤗🤗🤗🤗

He also said something about liking barbecues,when he talked about what he likes to do. It's braai in Afrikaans. I lived there when i was a child and although i dont understand it anymore I caught that word. Its true they use mixed words, i spoke English there, but if we were going to have a barbecue with friends we would say "we are having a braai" It's a pity i forgot the language!

Zeno het ook van "braai" gepraat. Ek kan bevestig dat 'n braai is 'n stokperdjie vir talle van ons mense in Suid Afrika. I'm just trying to see if I can still remember how to write Afrikaans. We studied English and Afrikaans as second languages at school, and my native language as first language. The majority of us can speak five to six of the 11 official languages and we do a lot of code switching when we talk amongst ourselves 😀

Lovely video, that only proves the romanic soul of english, english is out of germanosphere forever, totally distopic in deep level. Answers: sea for 6, heart for black,she can't catch all sentences and presentations etc... Nice 👍🙂 to see it.😉

If you're wondering, the word swart is still used in English. One example is the word "swarthy.

He has a difficult afrikaans accent kuddo's to Rosa, Svea for getting most of it correct 🙂

He definitely has a capetonian accent, it would be interesting to see someone who speaks midland afrikaans which is a bit closer to dutch with a more formal pronounciation

I love this channel! The similarities and differences between languages is fascinating. Can you do a video about slang words in different languages?

Sophia did better than I thought she might. This is like one step too far removed for US people to catch much. "I am" a few times and a couple other words. Even the "Suid Afrika" was hard to catch in that. Part of it is that female voices' frequencies cut through better and are easier to understand.

It's insane how different his Afrikaans is compared to mine, a lot of people speak like he does, but not quite, man's been in Korea for 17 years of course his grammar is a bit rough, but generally it was still a good rep for our language, it feels more broken than how I speak Side note he places a 't' at the end of what I call kuns, which is still correct, although you would hear this kind of thing generally more from older Afrikaans as it's more formal, I'm sure some people might have noticed that since it's derived from Dutch, and they still use kunst, we've changed the spelling, but as stated both are still considered correct and part of the language, and there is quite a variety of words that this applies to

I remember I watched a video long time ago where the Belgian host interviewed Candice Swanepoel in Dutch while she answered in Afrikaans

I wonder if he's home language is Afrikaans or English or if he has lost the way to with the correct Afrikaans words. He said Partye which the German girl explained correctly and means the same thing in Afrikaans (political parties) whereas parties like partying in Afrikaans is Partytjies

Swart also exists in english and it means dark/gloomy but its rarely used these days.

I thoroughly enjoyed this.

The way that these are 2 of my languages and i was waiting for this exacttttt video!

This video shows how knowing several languages and how language history works has an impact on understanding languages you don't know. I don't get why they had an American in there though. Another thing though is that his Afrikaans was not very good. He seems to have gotten out of practice. This by a German South African who also speaks Afrikaans. Then again Capetown Afrikaans, especially among the coloured community is a dialect of the proper afrikaans taught in school. That said; i struggle with understanding both english and Afrikaans spoken among the coloured community, and I'm fluent in both those languages.

Did he say he got engaged to a Korean? He mentioned 'korean' when he spoke about his engagement but he forgot to mention that part when he translated what he was saying so I don't know if I got that right or not lol. But I understood like 98% of what he was saying. Cool.

It's amazing how English is the same but different it's the most distant of the germanic languages

Afrikaans is also called Baby Dutch. It is a spoken form of a 'Dutch' language that separated itself from the outside world, including the Netherlands, after the British rule in South Africa. Where the Dutch language has been influenced by many French and German loan words in recent centuries, the Afrikaans has remained pure 'Dutch' since the 17th century. An Afrikaans speaker will have trouble understanding Dutch because Dutch is very developed. A Dutch speaker will understand Afrikaans fairly well, mainly because it is written phonetically and has a simple grammar. Because of the phonetic script and simple grammar, it seems to a Dutch person as if it was written by a child who is just learning to write Dutch. A Dutchman will also recognize a lot of Afrikaans (Dutch) words but never use them. Some Afrikaans words may sound funny to a Dutch person, but in the end they are logically composed Dutch words. Dutch-Afrikaans Giraffe- kameelperd (camel-hors) lift- hysbak (lifting bin) Harmonica -bekfluitje (mouth whistle) Baby couveuse - baba broeikas (baby greenhouse) Kameleon - verkleurmannetje (coloring man) Squash- muurbal (wall ball) Viaduct - duikweg (diving road)

This is lovely! But it seems like my man has forgotten a bit of his Afrikaans 🤭

Geluk met jou verlowing 🎉

it is not fair for the american one. i mean it is kind of dutch. and german and dutch is also pretty similar. but english is verry different. so people should not think the american girl is dumb, it is just soooooo different while for the other two it is verry similar.

It is a bit of a stretch calling Afrikaans a language, it is much more an older dutch dialect. As a dutch speaker i find it easier to understand than some of the dutch dialects.

Depends where in the country you are hey like in Durban which is in KZN (KwaZuku-Natal) on the west coast is mostly Zulu and English, only like 3-4% (3.6%, googled it) speak Afrikaans as a first language so yah barely (which still amounts to a lot of people but I digress)

There is also asymmerty in understanding Afrikaans vs Dutch. I seems to easier for Dutch people to understand Afrikaans than the other way around. Afrikaans has been able to get rid of needless complexity where Dutch stuck to it. In that sense Afrikaans is actually quite similar to English.

I am sure he meant Durban - on the East. We don’t speak a lot of Afrikaans here but in Cape Town they speak a lot of Afrikaans.

The American girl was so fun to watch , I was anticipating her answer each time 😂

Ek praat Afrikaans.

English is very different to the others because it has a huge amount of borrowed words from Romance languages, mainly Latin, French and Italian. Old English is actually similar to Old Norse.

I love these videos. They remind me of my times in hostels all over the world. Conversations with foreigners of a like mind. Best times. These women were wonderful. That American girl was adorable. Lol.

Ah Sophia ❤ she's amazing

I think the next one you can do are Can they guess/understand Yiddish? Can you guess/understand Luxembourgish?

I had three semesters of German in college so the "ich wohne" gave it away. Afrikaans, Dutch are all similar to German. Jawohl mein Herr! 😅

As an Afŕikaner who is proud of the most modern World language, just a few observations. When Willem Alexander, the Dutch King addresses the nation he speaks a completely different dialect to what is heaard on the streets of Amstercdam. Flemish is closest to Afrikaans. Àfrikaans is a very poetic language because of and despite some gutteral sounds. Wat is mooier as: ,Uit die blou van Onse hemel....' of ,Winternag' of .Oktobermaand'.

His accent makes it difficult. The accent in the more Northern parts of South Africa sound way closer to common Dutch than the Cape accent.

When I visited SA I was surprised that people don't really learn each-others languages. There is no mingling between groups, that rainbow nation thing is not a reality. They all just communicate in English and keep apart from each-other as much as possible. Afrikaaner learning Zulu? a rarity. Xhosa learning Afrikaans? Seldomly happening. I'm also from a country with several languages and the first language we learn in school is the one of the closest region to us. English comes after that and then we learn a second language of our country as third language. Many people do struggle less with English than with another language of our country but English is just a very easy language. In many jobs though you need to know at least two national languages. Also everything is written in all the official languages.

Wow I felt like Sophia looks different here and she's actually happy😊

i used to learn german in school so i understood some of the words but i am quite intrested in south african culture,history and languages so i would like to learn some afrikaans.. but at the same time i undertstand some south african pople dont like to speak this language and that's why i feel like South Africa and Poland are quite similiar cause politics seem to be very cpomlicated, every city has different traditions but now many poeple partipate in them..

Afrikaans is much more similar to Flemmish as spoken in Belgium, but not at all dissimilar to old Dutch and German and it's relatively easy to grasp the fundamentals of a sentence either way, I had no problem communicating with Dutch people in Holland but found it harder to understand Dutch because they speak really fast and use a lot more z's and g's in their words, German I found easier to grasp and Flemmish is almost verbatim Afrikaans so that was really easy. The one phrase that ONLY a South African will understand is the great mysterious "Ja-nee"

7:57 what did that german girl do there?

Lekker (good) job all! They all seem pretty clever and lovely young ladies and love the US girl’s look and Dutch girl’s hair and the equally pretty German Margot Robbie seems cool too

Aussie here, I did better than all of them I'm super proud of myself.

He said east, which is KZN province, and there English is more widely spoken. Cape Town is on the west coast where Afrikaans is widely spoken and understood. This guy doesn't speak correct or pure Afrikaans, more like a slang which is common with Cape Coloureds. He cannot express himself very well in pure Afrikaans. He admitted it as well, he mixes English-Afrikaans and uses a type of anglicised Afrikaans when he fails to remember the Afrikaans word. I would know, I am Cape Coloured too. Unfortunately a lot of us cannot speak pure Afrikaans, that's why some of us pretend not to understand or refuse to speak it at all and we are embarrassed of our slang. But we understand it very well. Its a shame, though, as it's a beautiful language and I am proud to be able to speak it purely. We should be proud to be able to speak Afrikaans, a derivative of Dutch and proud that we know and can speak 2 languages (in my case 3). Other nations only speak 1 language in their country.

He also said about braais :p they didn’t recognise that and he forgot, but yah it’s so similar but different than Durban English too, one more influenced by Afrikaans and Khoisan people and Khoi languages, and one more Zulu and Indian (and other south Asian) ones, it very much depends on where you’re from hey

There should be there someone who speaks Frisian (for instance) instead of an English-native speaker. English has changed SO MUCH from its old form "old English". 70% of its current vocabulary comes from Latin, French, etc. So it does not make much sense that she is there. Cool video anyway :)

I concur that because most of us speak two or more of the twelve official languages...we tend to use words from all of them when communicating... Interesting about the pronunciation of a word and the link to a dialect... 🇿🇦

As a German native speaker, I think I would have understood much more if he just talked a little bit more slowly.

Swart reminded me of the word "swarthy", so I had guessed "dark". Close!

Afrikaans is modified dutch

He said kunst which is not an Afrikaans word it's either kuns = art or kunste = arts, or it might be his pronunciation as he's lived abroad so long.

These are the four languages I speak lol. My dutch is the worse, as I never learned offficial grammar, but can still understand and read.

I love to see a south african based video❤ really hope to see more of these with maybe other s. Africans in the future

This was one of the most interesting videos so far! Very cool to have an Afrikaans speaker here! Next you should try to get a Yiddish speaker and compare it to German, Dutch, Hebrew and English :)

Ik (I) = Ek. Also many z in Dutch are s in Afrikaans, like ses & swart. In older Dutch we could call a feestje a partijtje, but as with the German partij in Dutch now mostly references to a party (politically, or ideologically). I think the add-lip was him saying he liked talking and to talk: Praat, Praten. The thing non of them mentioned. The thing with the sentences = you also need time to translate in your brain, and write down what was said, so translate twice basically for non-English native speakers. And with the sentences following each other fast, it is harder to recap all the things said. If you are professionally translating over a person (head sets) you usually have a short delay, following the other person. It is easier if you have to translate for a person but also have his/her/their transcript. Since grammar and word placements might differ in different languages. It's not like you can literally translate every word and not having to change grammar word arrangements all the time, or with phrases. In Dutch we have; (Gedragen als) Een olifant in een porseleinkast - saying. Meaning having not much regards for others In Belgian Dutch; (Gedragen als) Een olifant in een porseleinwinkel [In older expressions we talk about an aap [monkey] not an olifant [elephant]] In English one might say: (Behaving like) A bull in a china shop. But if I was translating literally; [NL -> ENG] An elephant in a china cupboard [BE -> ENG] An elephant in a china shop.

When i was in Germany 🇩🇪 i could understand a little bit of Gremn because i know how to speak Afrikaans fluently. I then came across Belgians speaking their language and i could understand almost everything. I then approached them and asked what language they were speaking and they said it was Flemish. I was so surprised 😂 But i speak 11 South African languages the 12th being Tsotsi Taal which is a mixture of almost all South African languages spoken in the Townships/ Black areas. It's good to know more than 1 language 😂Gogo/grandma from Soweto South Africa 🇿🇦

Wow, World Friends just threw Sophia under the bus big time on this one, she looked completely lost and out of place! What was the point?

남 아프리카 언어를 독일 여성분 네델란드 여성분은 잘 이해 하는게 놀랍습니다,물론 역사적 배경이 있다고 생각합니다,더 신기한건 미국여성 소피아씨가 미국 여성의 이미지가 없는것 같습니다 😶

The American girl did well she really tried and she gains my respect ,Sy het baie goed gedoon congrats ❤ im South African of indian decent but had afrikaans in our curriculam and the end of the day she had an idea of everything he said and it isnt that easy

Woah bra! what you mean Especially cape town ?? "the East of south Africa (yes kzn in particular ) cant really speak afrikaans , especially cape town"no man ! we like invented afrikaans in the cape ! ons praat baie afrikaans innie kaap lol . as per google : Afrikaans is spoken most in the Western Cape (49.7%) and Northern Cape (53.8%), which are also the two provinces where it is the majority language. Other areas where Afrikaans is spoken include: Gauteng: 12.4% Eastern Cape: 10.6% North West: 9% Mpumalanga: 7.2% Limpopo: 2.6% KwaZulu-Natal: 1.6%

Nun denn, speziell für die deutsche Dame im Video (ich komme übrigens aus den Niederlanden): Wie gut sprichst du Englisch! Ich weiß, dass in Deutschland etwas weniger Englisch gesprochen wird als in den Niederlanden, aber Mann, Mann, Mann, du sprichst es gut. Übrigens konnte ich sein Afrikaans perfekt verstehen.

The American girl needs to take a course in a Germanic language.

Cool concept and fun video. However, the Afrikaans speaker is not using the Afrikaans language very eloquently. He speaks with quite a THICK Capetonian accent, which I think made it harder for the Dutch and German speakers. We need to compare Afrikaans to Scandinavian languages - so many similarities between Afrikaans, Danish and Swedish.

Afrikaans sounds like a mix between Danish and German to my Swedish ears. Can understand like 90%. And I only speak German of those two,

Flemish would be better than English rbh

should have replaced the Ametican girl with a flemish speaker

I am born in Amsterdam, my parents are Armenian, and I also speak English. So I speak those 3 languages, but I can understand Afrikaans so well! It's like broken Dutch, and I don't think I'm the only one who thinks that

He don't talk Afrikaans very good.

Why the american girl…. It makes no sense here….

No, it was not colonisation. When Jan Van Riebeeck landed the southern tip of Africa, only the Khoisan resided there. They were not colonised. That was much later when the British arrived.

It’s funny that I can hear what his first language is by listening to his accent. Language is amazing!

For hobby the Afrikaans word you are looking for is stokperdjie. Thanks, I find these interesting to see what other countries hear.