British Reacts To Do the Dutch Understand Afrikaans? | Easy Dutch 62 

as a dutch person having read old dutch and german writings and immersed myself in old dialects I can fully understand Afrikaans or even at least 85%

Dude don't conflate African and Afrikaans. African languages are completely different.

Just came across this video.I am South African and I am fluent in both Afrikaans and English.I also studdied dutch for a whyle now.I can surely say the two languages are very similar and most Afrikaans people should understand dutch easily if it is spoken slowly.

This was fun, thank you for the video and commentary

VOC is the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (United East-Indie Company) and the first and largest business enterprise ever in the world. At the stock market in Amsterdam everyone could buy shares of the VOC.

Africans is people from africa, Afrikaans is a language spoken in South Africa and Namibia you seem to be confusing the two. Africans speak thousands of languages and yes 99% of people in South Africa speak english. 99% of people are multilingual english is lingua-franca in South Africa.

Afrikaans is very close to the Dutch language. One major difference is that the Afrikaans language creates more own words in stead of just incorporating the foreign word in the own language. Also words the Dutch settlers didn't know a Dutch word for where created on the spot. Giraffe is a well known one. The Dutch settlers didn't know a giraffe, so they called it a kameelperd (Camel Horse), as they knew camels and horses.

Would you like to hear something in this video in Afrikaans to compare it with Dutch?

maybe this video explaines it, its on YT: English vs. German vs. Dutch vs. Afrikaans | West Germanic Language Comparison

Hey, it's been mention by a few but so apolgoies for repeating it. But first, kudos on posting your reaction to this video -- although objectively you didn't have much of a reaction, except to keep referring to "African" and "African language" and how it's surprising the "African language" is so similar to Dutch. First off, the language in the video is "Afrikaans". There is no "African" language, although collloquially "African" language in English typically refers to indigenous languages that originate in Africa. Technically there are 6,000 languages spoken in Africa, although "African" usually means Bantu-linguistic family of which there are 400-600 languages. Obviously saying "the African" language is meaningless. At some point you ask, "Do Africans speak English?" which I am assuming giving the benefit of the doubt that you mean do (white) South African Afrikaans speakers speak English. To which the answer is most Afrikaners speak much better English than most English South Africans speak Afrikaans. If you follow sports, esp Rugby, and listen to the after match reports, if they interview a white SA players odds are he's Afrikaans. So there's your answer. You've probably heard "Africans" (i.e. Afrikaners) speaking English all the time. In fact, given how many are in the UK, you probably even know a few and simply think of them as Saffas. Anyway, back to "African" languages. Akrikaans is none of these. While it did technically originate in Africa, it is an evolution of Eurpeoan West Germanic, specifically Dutch, transplanted to Africa -- in the same way American English is not indigenous to the US but a transplant of English. Linguistically, Afrikaans is a sister language of modern Dutch, both having originated from a common ancestor, 17th century Dutch. In fact, in several parts of the video, the "announcers" speak Afrikaans which would not have been obvious to you and you probably thought they were speaking Dutch. For instance, in the intro the announcer is speaking Afrikaans with a halting Dutch accent. The video makes several minor mistakes. The Dutch part keeps calling it "Zuid Afrirkaanse taal", literally "South African langauge". Again there is no "South African" language. SA has 11 official languages, two "European": Afrikaans and English, and eight indigenous Bantu family langauges and one indigenous Khoisan family language. In fact, if you really want to say what language is really "South African" the only contender is Khoisan (the clicking language) since all the others are the result of migrations and Khoisan developed within the borders of modern day South Africa. The video also keeps repeating that Afrikaans is the result of "pure" Dutch mixing with non-Dutch (thinly veiled reference to black) Africans. This is also linguistically not correct. Current linguistic thinking is that Afrikaans is the result of accelerated evolution of 17th century Dutch when mostly other _European_ natives had to learn Dutch, followed by disconnect from the "mother tongue" in Europe. About 30% of Boers were Dtuch, while the remaining 60% were evenly split between French and German settlers to the Western Cape area (near Cape Town). This is why many Afrikaans names (like Francois Pienaar, the 1995 Springbok captain) has a double French names -- Francois, and Pienaar (in French "Pinard"). Nonettheless, according to wikipedia more than 95% of Afrikaans words are of direct Dutch origin, albeit with difference spellling rules. In fact. several scholars do consider Afrikaans still closer to many aspects of 17th century South Dutch dialects than modern Dutch (which is mostly traced to 17th Century North Dutch dialects). So all in all, there is very little surpising in this video. "White" Dutch (and French and German) farmers went to the Cape Town area in the 17th century. The non Dutch speakers had to learn Dutch as it was the colonial adminstration langauge. Then with the Napoleonic wars Britain "annexed" Cape Town and the Dutch population and their language was isolated from Eurpoean Dutch. The result, over time, was Afrikaans. These days, English is agruably the most widely spoken language in South Africa, but that's a whole different story.

Dude you use the word “African”to describe a people who are descendants of mainly Dutch French and German migrants if you say African we automatically think you are referring to the blackpeople of ZA.The interviewer of this video is wrong when he stated that Afrikaans came to being when the indigenous people here tried to learn Dutch,After 1652 Hordes of Dutch farmers came to live in ZA,also Afrikaans became an official language in 1925 and not in 1961.

It's like asking people from Britain if they understand Jamaican English...