English vs. German vs. Dutch vs. Afrikaans | West Germanic Language Comparison REACTION! 

Hi, As I'm Dutch, I recognise Piesang of South Africa (banana) as the Indonesian word for banana and as that was a colony of the Dutch at the same time (more or less) as South Africa, the word may have migrated from Indonesia to South Africa. Thanks for a nice reaction.

I love your expressions😂 BTW the Afrikaans word for giraffe, kameelpard, directly translated says - camelhorse. And a hippopotamus in Afrikaans is a seekoei, which directly translated is seacow. There's a funny video of a man telling a story in Afrikaans & then it's directly translated to English & it's so funny. Direct translations from Afrikaans to English are good for a laugh! Proudly South African & love all 11 of our languages.

5:32 That's actually a joke you learn as a little kid in Germany. If someone comes up to you and says "Hi" (sounding like Hai/shark) you look shocked and ask "Wo/Where?" 😱😂

As an Afrikaans speaking English South African with a Dutch father I approve of this video. Surprisingly I could understand a lot of the German quite easily. Hospital in Afrikaans is 'hospitaal' but I'm sure that was probably a typo in the last slide.

I speak four languages here in South Africa which are English, Afrikaans, Setswana and Zulu, and because our 11 official languages are so similar with each other it means to a certain degree I can speak 10 of our 11 official languages of South Africa. Also because I can also speak Afrikaans it means I can speak Dutch to a degree. So technically it means I can speak 11 languages, even if I'm not 100% fluent in all of them

Afrikaans has a lot of influences from the other African languages as well as Malay and English itself. Kameelperd is an Afrikaans original. We don't have a "hard j" sound in formal Afrikaans, all of the "g" sounds are fricative and we probably would've used it on the word "giraffe", but considering the rest of the world uses the "hard j" sound, or something similar for "giraffe", it just made more sense to use a new word. The Cape-Malay accent does make use of a "hard j" sound, but this is only applied to words starting with the letter "j". Directly translated "kameelperd" is "camel horse", and it kinda does look like a cross between a camel and a horse.

Piesang comes from Indonesia. The Dutch made Indonesia into a colony and the word for banana in Indonesia is Pisang. Many Dutch sailors adopted this word. And because South Africa was a halfway station the word Piesang became the Afrikaans word for banana. Sausage comes from France. The English nobilty spoke French and used this word so it became the new English word for the old English word weursht. Just like chair instead of stool or beef instead of rund.

As a Belgian, where we've had Dutch , French , English and German in school , Afrikaans literally sounds like our local dialects. So many, including myself could say that we fluently speak all 5 languages easely or at least 3 of the 5 fluently , And 2 of them to a usable degree. ( for the Flemish part , Wallonie only speaks French XD )

Hi again, Kameelperd (Giraffe) is funny. From a Dutch perspective, it seems to be a fusion of camel (Kameel in Dutch) and horse (Paard in Dutch, Perd sounds like the South Africa equivalent). Funny also as South Africa is the only country of the four (UK-Germany-Netherlands) were giraffes are native animals.

In Dutch we use the words tractor and trekker. It's mixed up. Also depends where you live I think.

I was going for a swim at the beach in a South African town (Franskraal) Another swimmer was coming out and said to me what sounded like „Hi meneer“ which to me meant „Hello sir“. How friendly! Turns out he meant „Haai meneer“ so he was telling me that there was a shark.!!! My Afrikaans friends think this hilarious 😂

learning a language is like most other things: focus on what you CAN do instead of what you find difficult, the rest will follow.

In my family's language, Mennonite Low German: Een (pronounced like German Eins without the S) or Eent Twee (Pronounced like Zwei) Drei Vea (pronounced almost like "Fire" in a British accent) Fief (the "ie" is like German) Sass Säwen Acht Näajen Tien Root Bleiw Witt Jreen Jälroot Jäl Roosa Schwoat Aupel Banan (I don't know what a pineapple is called) Malkj Broot Worscht Kjarps Kjees Koffe Hunt Kaut Koo Pieet Boa Heifesch Tieja Liew Jierop Eelefaunt Beisikjel Mootasikjel Loftschepp Kjätel / Trekjta Boot Zuch And interestingly, the word for shark in Finnish is also "Hai".

The original name for dog in English is Hound, which in turn is derived from the word Hond and is originally a Dutch word that was used as a loan word in the English language. 1% of all words in the English language are Dutch words.

A very early English term for Giraffe is Cameleopard., which is similar to the Africaans word. Ananas for pineapple is the way the French say it too. English originally was a germanic language, but a lot of French got added after 1066, bits from other places have been absorbed too, mainly from imperial days.

Sausage might have a french root 'saucisson' which means more or less the same thing. Remember that after the Norman conquest in 1066 a lot of French words were assimilated into English, before that Old English and Old Dutch were quite similar.

Notice 'siblings' in English, ' Geschwister' in German and 'brothers and sisters' in Dutch. We don't have a word like that in Dutch. I always wondered why that is.

thanks for showing my request, i think Highly about you ;) also thanks for showing my Margrathen and canadian vets request. bless you

Kameelperd. Lol. That's too funny. A camel horse. Well... why not, lol

Very nice content Michel, enjoyed and learned something. There are so many similarities between these languages. I also speak "Fries" (frisian), and when I was visiting Norway a couple of years ago, I found out there are a lot of similaties with that language as well. But I think you already knew this. Keep these kind of content coming!

If you are curious about where kameelperd for giraffe came to Afrikaans, I'm more than happy to inform you that is a totally different word in English, German or Dutch, because it derives from the Greek word for the animal. Take in mind that in Greek "pardalos" means "spotted" So a spotted lion becomes Leo Pard. And a spotted Camel becomes Camelo Pard ΛΕΟΠΑΡΔΑΛΙΣ & ΚΑΜΗΛΟΠΑΡΔΑΛΙΣ accordingly.

All of them are germanic languages but had al different influences. English had a lot French influence. And Afrikaans had influences from mostly Dutch but also English, Indonesia(former Dutch colony) and off course the local languages. Happy to understand all of them. Dutch is my mother tongue, English my second language, Germany is only 5km away so understand it very well and Afrikaans is just very similar to Dutch. Like Afrikaans a lot because it sounds a bit like archaic Dutch and a lot of words of them sound more like my local (officially) Dutch dialect.

Rob Words, has a lot of great videos on how languages are related and change over time. One on German vs English show some simple “tricks” on how to figure out the meaning of German words as an English speaker

I'm an English South African, I had both Afrikaans and German as school subjects. I used to live on the border of the Netherlands and Germany and now I live in Berlin. I speak German fluently, understand dutch 100%, but somehow I lost my ability to speak Afrikaans😅 I feel so ashamed when people ask me to speak Afrikaans. My brain automatically switches between Dutch and German. To me, it feels like there are some rules missing in Afrikaans and I want to complete the sentence with the German or Dutch sentence structure.

Pisang is Indonesian. It came to Afrikaans through Dutch, although we don't use it often. Sausage comes from French. Many English words are, more than half of the English words actually has their origin in French. English is mostly Germanic in base words like counts, food and animals. Dog may be different from the others, but Hound is actually the related word. Horse is different from the others, but all three other languages actually have a related word: Ros in Dutch and Ross in German, both are regional forms of "Paard/Pferd". English word "shark" had an original meaning of "scoundrel", related to Dutch "schurk" (criminal). Hai/Haai comes from Norwegian "hár" which is related to proto-Germanic *hako (hook) because of the shape of the shark's back fin. Afrikaans Kameelperd actually means camelhorse. Giraffe comes from Arabic: "zarāfa".

I am an afrikaans-speaking South African. The dutch came to Cape Town to start a 'garden' where fresh fruit and vegetables could be bought by the ships passing the Cape of Good Hope. They arrived in 1652. I have inherited an old dutch bible with a letter in the front of the bible directed at 'de staten general' and the letter was dated 16 July 1637. This bible probably found its way to South Africa with the first dutch setlers.

I am Swedish and I must say that our language is sometimes very similar to Dutch and sometimes very similar to Afrikaans, in the way of accents.

Piesang came from Dutch Indonesia, which traded bananas via the Cape of South Africa to Europe by the Dutch East-Indian Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Company, VOC for short). Also in Dutch we sometimes say that "You are the piesang" and it basically means "You are screwed".

Fascinating how I could understand most stuff in the other three languages while only actually speaking english. Some pronounciation is almost same or very similar. Some words are also close to what they would be in my own language - despite it being finnic altogether xD this made me want to take up language classes again though, for sure!

Two random things: 1) The simple basic English words often have a German/Frisian shared origin (like Dutch and German and Scandinavian languages). However, when it comes to the more 'expensive' words, English has a lot of French influence (and perhaps Latin as well). As in the clip it were the 'simple' words, you see a lot of similarities. English will likely diverge more from Dutch and German and might be suddenly a bit closer to French when you go to the more fancy words. 2) In The Netherlands we have a second language called (West)Frisian that is still spoken. This language is the closest to Old-English of all the living languages. Meaning that an English person from the Middle Ages is more likely to be able to talk with a farmer from the north of The Netherlands, then with people from England.

In English, a giraffe was originally called 'Cameleopard' because explorers described them as a cross between a camel (long neck) & Leopard (patchy/spotted hide)!!

A lot of people I have met get confused between Afrikaans, Dutch and German. I am a South African and I do talk multiple languages but my first is Afrikaans. My mother is a travel agent and I was once on a trip with a bunch of Italian people and there was a boy about my age and tried to flirt with me and literally said , " Teach me that beautiful language you speak with your mother you beautiful GERMAN girl or wait you Dutch right ? Wait Afrikaans? Is that even a language? How do you spell it? Why does it have a k? Why does your ks and gs and all your other letters sound so weird. " 😭

The joke about the shark... Ive actually seen stupid kids go "Haai! Haai!" At the beach... trying to scare people while having possible denial 😂

If you compare South African with the Frisian language, there are more similarities in terms of grammar and pronunciation then dutch language itself.

Awesome vid! Cheers from South Africa.

10:20 Afrikaans is more polite, than Dutch "I work in the sick ones' house"

Thanks for the laughs😂 and please, stay awesome!

Just awesome to see these closely related languages together like that. And you’re doing a great job with Dutch man!

Thats why I speak, understand and feel all the four languages, my brains started to work after being in the Dutch airforce for 2 years in germany in 1986 till 1989. English was already on a high level because of school and TV we watch in english, my german I learned as a militair and later I lived for 10 years in Germany. And South Africaans and Vlaams (Belgium) is easy stuff for a Dutch person...Frisian is more difficult....

😂 You are the laugh I needed

Very interessting. Thanks. Danke. Tack. Greetings from Gothenburg Sweden..

Btw some words in English come from Latin and old Norman French for example hospital in English if we use strictly Germanic origin words it be sickhouse and if im right all those would directly translate to sickhouse if we don’t take into account hospital

The words for black in German, Dutch, and Afrikaans have the same root as the English word "swarthy," which means dark (typically referring to skin color or complexion).

I loved watching this

I speak three of the language and understand dutch if speaking slowly, but your facial expressions are the best😂😂

I read ones that Malaysian people immigrated to South Africa therefor South Africa got few Malaysian/Indonesia words in there language like biesang. Western germanic languages are English, Dutch, Flemish eastern germanic languages is in Germany and Nordic germanic languages are the Scandinavion languages. I heard from german people that when we dutch people talk in dutch it is for them like we are talking English sometimes.

From what I recall English is what happened when a Germanic language got taken over by a romance (French) after the norman conquest of 1066, Flemish is if the Germanic form of English went more Germanic instead of becoming a hybrid of Germanic/romance language.

It's interesting, how the similarities change.

Hahahah, Haai, I'm gonna die! LOL Hi-la-rish!

I know the languages are so similar since i speak Dutch, English and German. However in this video they are kinda selective in which words they choose in a sentence. For instance, the last sentence: "I work in the hospital". And for Dutch they choose "Ik werk in het ziekenhuis". However in Dutch we also have the word "Hospitaal", that is a synonym for "Ziekenhuis". So they also could have used "Ik werk in het hospitaal" which looks way more similar with "I work in the hospital" and "Ek werk by die hospital". And yes here we use ziekenhuis more often than hospitaal, but the word hospitaal is still in use, and common enough. Also Indonesian word for banana is Pisang. So it is likely that the Afrikaanse word Piesang is derived from that since both countries were colonies of the Dutch for several hundreds of years.

Fun fact, Middle English used to have the harsh 'ch' sound like German and Dutch, we used to say night as nichte (nikh-te) and 'the day after tomorrow' used to be overmorrow, which in modern German and Dutch is übermorgen and overmorgen

I speak four languages, ranging from English to high German. Because they are so closely related it is very easy to mix them up. Worse, there are many false phonetics, words that sound exactly the same but have a different mening. The most infamous being the Dutch Zee and meer (sea and lake) that are the exact opposite in German

A giraffe’s Afrikaans name comes from the way it walks and runs. When it walks, it walks like a camel (left legs together, then right legs together). But when it runs, it runs like a horse (right front leg with left back leg and visa versa). In Afrikaans a camel is a “kameel” and a horse is a “perd”, hence the name kameelperd (walks like a kameel and runs like a perd)

Hi. Your pronounciation of the texts, no matter Dutch, Germain or South African is almost perfect 👍 . I know because I lived in South Africa for 3 years, and as a teenager in Canada, before that I went to highschool in Nederland where I also learned German(Duits) which I loved because of the beautiful literature, (Duits! that is sometimes a bit confusing with the word Dutch) and on top I have a German sister in law and we have a weekly skype session in 3 languages. Just to keep up 😊 I am sure you could learn all 3 as well. 😉 By the way: the harsh G is not spoken like that where I live. Noord Brabant! It is a soft G. There is a lot of difference in spoken Dutch, depending on the region. Dialect! That would be much harder to learn. That is why all over in the Netherlands we learn to speak ABN. algemeen beschaafd Nederlands. You could translate that as 'civilisised!' 😂 Compliment aan jou. Je doet het PRIMA. OOK MET JE MOOIE MUZIEKVIDEO'S. ❤

One of the main reasons why English differs so much from the other languages is that English has been influenced by romance languages most (about 40-50% of modern English derives from French or Spanish).

I'm South African. I speak Afrikaans and am learning German. This was so cool to see. 😁

6:50 Trekker is also a correct way of saying "tractor" in Dutch :)

De "braaievleis", de Zuid-Afrikaanse versie van de barbecue,

The "Doeiii" says it all 😂

Haha, you.."doei".. that was funny 😂

Where kameelperd comes from? Kameel is Afrikaans for camel. Perd is Afrikaans for horse - it may not sound like the English, it does sound like German and Dutch. So, the giraffe is called a camel-horse.

My Wife's Grandmother sounded more like the lady from the Netherlands. However she was from a very rural part of Germany about two miles from the Dutch border. As an Englishman that can speak German, I could understand her better than many Germans could, once I got used to it?

If you wanna see more similarities between german and dutch, they have to use words from low german or frisian rather then high german. Cause there is a very big difference between the dialects from the north and the south in germany.

its even more simmilair than you think. for example: in the video in English its "my favorite color is blue", and in dutch its "mijn lievelingskleur is blauw". But if you want to translate it more literally, its "Mijn Favorite kleur is blauw" which is even more similar.

😂😂 kameelperd is realy funny word for giraffe! Love it. Kameel have to be Camel (Kamel in swedish) and perd have to be horse (pferd in german) = camelhorse! A very good name for a giraffe in fact! 👏

Nice one, thanks! @05:37 The moral here being: If you want to survive; don't stick with only English...😉 Well, knowing that English is an Indo-European language, closely related to languages such as Frisian, (Lower) German and Dutch, which are counted among the West Germanic languages. It originated in England during the time of the Anglo-Saxons. (Angel-Saksen) Angel -> Eng-land.🤓 Conclusion here would be that the English went pretty far astray (not uncommon).😉😁

A more traditional Dutch word for sausage is “saucijs” and we still know today the saucijzenbroodje (sausage filled pastry) so there’s a link😅

Really like you do this. I speak also german but i really love the german language above dutch. Btw almost whole the wold say something like annanas but English is the odd one out there xd.Kameelperd it sounds like combo of camel and horse but still kinda weird xd. I am dutch btw and live in Belgium since 1,5 year.

I'm a linguist from South Africa, l can speak around 15 languages

If you look at the Afrikaans sentence " My hand is in warm water".... It is spelled the same and has the same meaning in English.

I'm South African and I speak Afrikaans, English and a little bit of Zulu. However, I do like to hear and see how other languages is pronounced. I think Afrikaans formed with a lot of European influence due to what happened in history with regards to people who came here. Also, I heard the other day that in Indonesia they say Oma and Opa for grandparents, as well as in Germany, and here we say Ouma and Oupa. I also heard in Spanish the word Gratis means for free and in SA we use it in Afrikaans also as Gratis and it means for free. Pronunciation is just different. Also, in the german language they use the word lekke and we say lekker which means it's nice, or that something is good. Also, a long time ago, a lot of South Africans immigrated to Argentina....I think our trading posts from the coastline as well as the road Cape to Cairo brought all the languages and cultures and thus make South Africa a very awesome and diverse country with great places and great food!

Just a shout out to 'Krankenhaus', chefs kiss

"Kameelperd" is not so odd - up until the 17th Century, the English word for a Giraffe was "Camelopard".

5:08 That's right. The word 'beer' is indeed a false friend between English and most notably Dutch and Afrikaans. As for the English word 'beer', here are the translations: (English) beer; (German) Bier; (Dutch) bier; (Afrikaans) bier. In the three other languages, the 'ie' combination is pronounced as a slightly shorter 'ee' than what is usual in English. 6:49 Sometimes the word 'trekker' from Afrikaans is also used in Dutch (I believe for a certain type of tractor only), but it doesn't seem to be the other way around with 'tractor'. 8:21 It's interesting that it seems impossible to literally translate the English word 'siblings' to Dutch or Afrikaans (as a Dutch guyI doubt whether 'Geschwister' is correct in German, because I thought it would only refer to sisters and not brothers, thinking that 'Brüder' or 'Gebrüder' would be the word for that). 'Brothers and sisters' is the literal translation in Dutch and Afrikaans. There is not one word for it. 10:13 In a more old-fashioned kind of Dutch, and possibly in the Flemish variation of Dutch, the word 'hospitaal' was/is used. The sound of the 'aa' is longer than what you hear in the example for Afrikaans, which is common in Dutch words with doubled vowels.

many times when English words are the odd ones out, we got that word from Norman French or a specific word became a general word. I think DOG used to be a specific kind of dog and HOUND was the general term, but they switched - Hound is now a specific type of dog.

In german, there is the word "werken" instead of Arbeit. Which isn't used in this way any longer, but a "Werk" means Factory or crafted piece. As well as its possible to use the word "Hound" instead of "dog" in english. So there are even more similarities if we try to find them.

@HighlyCombustibleReacts reminder that England was evaded by the Normans in 1066 and they brought over the French langue - this why Modern English has some strange spelling for that words would similar in Dutch, German and Afrikaans words

I speak afrikaans so I was very shocked when not too long ago I saw an Indonesian pisang dessert recipe, obviously very similar to the word piesang in afrikaans. I'm guessing we pinched it at some point, which makes sense since indonesia is a big player in the banana producing game.

I love the auto translator, you were called "Highly Compostable"...

Old dutch and old english are extremely similar, there’s this video where a guy tries to use old dutch to buy a cow from a farmer who speaks old english (or the other way around) its really interesting

To be fair, we still use hound in English, which is similar to the others. Also, some of the others still have dogge, which we'd understand as a mastiff. We also got shark from Dutch (schurk, meaning a baddie). It was originally used for someone who preyed on others...which is why we still have loan shark and card shark/sharp. It got transferred to the fish because of its predatory nature. It's likely that we've stuck with 'horse' because of Norse influence. The Norwegian for horse is hest. Way back in history, two Anglo Saxon brothers came over called Hengist and Horsa. Horsa meant horse and Hengist meant stallion. The two modern words are clearly just shortened versions.

04:05 "Sausage" is a French loanword, which I think it comes from Latin. 05:36 "Shark" is another latinism word in English since it comes from Latin "escualus". 07:25 I mean, English is a Germanic language, that's why there are lots of similarities.

All the shown languages are westgermanic, so basicly similar. In my native language, German, there are often also dated or otherwise rare used words, or only regional used dialect words. In this rare used words, you can find such ones, which are closer to the other languages, than usual Standard German. For example Pferd is usually used for horse, but Ross also exists. Or Löwe (lion) appears in poetry as Leu. Or Hahn (rooster/cock) can be also Gockel. Hospital/Spital is in some Swiss German also used, and the dutch Zieckenhuis was centuries ago in german a Siechenhaus. The word Seuche ist still used for dangerous diseases which can kill thousands of people in short time.

Norwegian here, speaking basic German. Fun fact: I understood a bit more Afrikaans than Dutch here.🙂But it would not take that long to learn both languages to a decent level, even with some really demanding pronunciation issues awaiting. Also, the grammar is less complex than in German. Main problem will be that English is so widely spoken in the Netherlands - and is an official language and a sort of lingua franca in SA.

English is different because of the Norman Conquest in 1066. Since then, English is only about 55% Germanic and 45% Latin (via Old French). Even in some of the Germanic words, French influenced the spelling and pronunciation. Most other Germanic languages today only have a tiny bit of influence from other languages for instance New High German is only about 5% Latin-based. If you put Old English aside these other languages it is a lot closer. The rest of it comes down to the languages evolving differently. Yellow in Old English is ġeolu, which is pronounced YAYOH-loo (with the eo (ay-oh) being pronounced as one syllable) so it sounds very similar to yellow but looks a lot closer to the other Germanic languages. Old English had 4 different ways to pronounce g, and modern consonant y came from one of them (y was its own vowel in OE pronounced like German ü). Also, in OE, dog was hund just like in NHG, and bird was fugol (compare NHG vogel) but hund became hound later in English and fugol became fowl (both more specific words) while the more specific words in OE, docga (hound) and bridd (baby bird) became the modern general terms. Also, in OE do you speak English and I speak English is "Spricst þu Ænglisc" and "Ic sprece Ænglisc", almost identical to New High German.

As a dutch person a lot of South-African just sounds like dutch with a heavy dialect.

Grappig om deze talen te vergelijken en verassend veel overeenkomsten ❤

About dog the English is alone, about cat the German is alone.

Indeed.. Germanic Languages are easy to pick up..Being Dutch, i learned German as a kid, watching German Children's programmes, like "Die Sendung mit der Maus" (The program with the Mouse), it taught me enough to just walk into a shop and buy something i wanted, when i was 12..

Here's one sentence for you that is spelled exactly the same and means the same too in English as in Afrikaans: "My hand is in warm water"

Very similar, but there are VAST differences. Afrikaans is a very unique language. You will notice this most when you listen to common talk. Dutch is far more lyrical than Afrikaans. Afrikaans sounds like a marriage between Scots, Malay, Arabic, Niger-Congo Bantu and Japanese (the last merely just for the intonation alone). The language has may influences of Khoi-San and French as well.

The English Language is germanic based , Old Dutch has more similarity with OLD-English, Modern English has has lots of later influences (french for example) there s also Frissian which may be easier for English folk (as Anglo-Frissian was once spoken in England, Frissian is only spoken in 3 areas, one is a province in the Netherlands and 2 others are i believe in or near Germany.

There are more words for the same item. Like the sausage, Dutch words for that are "worst" but for a smaller type of sausage we also use "saucijs". In the south of The Netherlands we have "worstenbroodje" in the north we use "saucijzenbroodje" for a same kind of snack. It's a pity Frisian language was not included, because that is the most close to English, as far as I understood.

They misspelled hospital in Afrikaans. The correct spelling is "hospitaal"

If you go back before 1066 English is a lot more related to German and Frisian Dutch. But their was a lot of Viking influence too prior to 1066.

I just found out something interesting. The Afrikaans name for the giraffe "Kameelperd" is derived via 17th century Dutch from the Latin name camelopardalis.

The "doei" at the end came surprisingly unexpected!

Sausage is from the French saucisson. Kameelperd literally means "camel horse" - go figure. All words meaning tractor come from the germanic verb "trekken" or to drag. Afrikaans started with the everyday Dutch spoken by sailors and tradesmen in early 17th century Netherlands. It was then influenced by Malay (from the Dutch East Indies), an assortment of African languages, French, Portuguese, German and even the odd Arabic word picked up from Arab traders on the East African coast. Later, when the English took over the Cape Colony in the early 19th Century English also started to have its impact on Afrikaans. At the same time, Afrikaans was at least partially detached from Dutch between the 1600's and today leading to a widening separation as the two languages evolved in their own ways. A classic case is in negatives. Afrikaans uses the double negative that has not been a feature of Dutch for a long time. For example, "I didn't do it" in Afrikaans is "Ek't dit nie gedoen nie". In Dutch that would be, "Ek heb het niet gedaan"*. Afrikaans also regularly uses the formal "U" as well as the informal "jy" a bit like the German Sie/du split/ English doesn't, using "you" for both formal and informal meanings. I don't think Dutch uses the formal/informal split nowadays either. That being said, up until the 1950's Afrikaans was looked down upon even by the Dutch speaking part of the white population of South Africa. It was considered a working dialect not a "proper" language or even a pidgin form of Dutch for communication with non-whites. Legal, church and government business were all written in "High Dutch", not Afrikaans. The first moves towards an Afrikaans Bible only began in the late 19th Century and even then only as a simplified selection of texts for non-white congregations who weren't expected to understand proper Dutch. The first complete version in Afrikaans, albeit a very formal version much closer to the Dutch Stainvertaling, was only published in 1933 as the sense of Afrikaner identity gained momentum. *My apologies if Google Translate mangled that, I speak English and Afrikaans but not Dutch.

I'm American and live in an area that linguistically is in a border between a Midwestern and Southern dialects/accent. The English speaker here is definitely American but, speaks very differently from me. If it were say an English speaking person from Scotland or Wales you would hear some butter ale and rolled Rs. In fact even just English speakers within the US might have to pay attention to follow along with some of the extreme accents. That being said. This is really fascinating.

Kameelperd - случайно не из французского вытащили? Там в своё время жирафа называли caméloparde. Хотя возможно и kameel + perd.