Afrikaans: A Daughter Language of Dutch
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- čas přidán 12. 05. 2024
- Today's episode is all about the Afrikaans language, its history as a daughter language of Dutch, and I look into the question “How similar are Dutch and Afrikaans?” * Click the link to get a free account at Afrikaanspod101: bit.ly/Afrikaanspod101.
For 33 other languages click here: langfocus.com/innovative-lang....
Special thanks to Joop Wijnandts for his Dutch voice recording, and Ernest Mostert for his Afrikaans voice recording. And thanks to Nils Van Dessel for his last minute recording.
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Special thanks to: BJ Peter DeLaCruz, Michael Cuomo, Nicholas Shelokov, Sebastian Langshaw, Brandon Gonzalez, Brian Michalowski, Adrian Zhang, Vadim Sobolev, Yixin Alfred Wong, Raymond Thomas, Simon Blanchet, Ryan Marquardt, Sky Vied, Romain Paulus, Panot, Erik Edelmann, Bennet, James Zavaleta, Ulrike Baumann, Ian Martyn, Justin Faist, Jeff Miller, Stephen Lawson, Howard Stratton, George Greene, Panthea Madjidi, Nicholas Gentry, Sergios Tsakatikas, Bruno Filippi, Sergio Tsakatikas, Qarion, Pedro Flores, and Raymond Thomas for their generous Patreon support.
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Source for history of Khoisan displacement: “South Africa: A Country Study” by Article by William H. Worger and Rita M. Byrnes. Library of Congress.
Online version: memory.loc.gov/master/frd/frdc... (see page 55 of 610).
Music:
Main music: “Erykah” by Otis McDonald.
Outro music: "Tarantula" by MK2.
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Gelukkig hoef ek nie Afrikaans te leer nie. Ek is Afrikaans en dit is my huistaal! Ek het joi video geniet. Dankie Paul.
@@zandresmith3409 is Afrikaans spoken in Zimbabwe?
hoe is jou afrikaans nou na 4 jaar wonder ek ?
We are only 4.4 million Afrikaners meaning 7 % of the population currently.
Also the Afrikaner "Boer" did not want to willing move to inner land of South Africa the British empire forced their law on them and they had a choice to move out of the borders of the Cape of good hope
I speak English German Afrikaans and Zulu. Afrikaans is by far the best language to swear in. It is very descriptive
Hoor...hoor...
@@K-a-n-d-i-s haha. Yeah it can be very vulgar and descriptive, painting vivid pictures... also, the sounds feel amazing as they leave the mouth.
P
I think we need some examples!
@@K-a-n-d-i-s lol I dont think that applies to men
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.
@Iris Bos yes it’s a dialect not a language
@@bruhz_089 it's a language.
@@Fuzzy_Halo The distinction between what is a dialect and what is a language is often a political one.
Many people say that Flemish is substantially different from Dutch and just as difficult to understand as Afrikaans, from the perspective of a speaker from, say, Amsterdam. And yet, the Belgians made a decision to declare it a form of "Nederlands". Standard Flemish has aligned with standard Dutch.
On the other hand, when Czechia and Slovakia separated, the two forms diverged. The Slovak government made a conscious decision to diverge from the Czech language that had dominated Czechoslovakia. Are they two dialects, or two variants of the same language? In the end it's a political decision.
@@bruhz_089 most people don't think so though
@Weasel India existed for thousands of years. You must mean modern (Post-British) India.
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.
We have several English accents...depending on educational level and cultural classes
You mean the Afrikaaner accent? It's literally my favourite accent in English, baie lekker!
I think I prefer British accents. I still find the SA accent interesting in its uniqueness.
And Irish.
Sharlto Copley
Being a native speaker, growing up speaking Afrikaans, I am very impressed with your video. Really good job sir. Baie, dankie!
ek stem saam.
Baie, dankie means bye and thanks?
@@c.nova8818 I'm not sure but "dankie" looks like "dankje", which means "Thank you" in dutch.
Makes me wonder if the fact that they write an " i " instead of a " j ", is because someone in the past messed up with their handwriting.
@@c.nova8818 baie means a lot . Dutsch veel or erg
@@Smulpaap123 And Danke in german also means Thank you.
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.
In de tegenovergestelde manier! :-)
LOL
Barney se comment het jou punt baie fokken goed geondersteun.
Vinnie Davinci. Oh take your racist bull crap somewhere else. The same can be said for a lot of languages, especially English.
Selfde gevoel hier bra
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.
Je suis français, j'aimerais apprendre le néerlandais, j'imagine que ce serait plus simple pour moi d'apprendre le néerlandais et non l'Afrikaans ?
@@whisper3574 l'Afrikaans est plus simple d'apprendre parce que c'est une version simple de Néerlandais. C'est plus facile pour les Néerlandais de comprendre l'Afrikaans que vice versa.
@@BabiletubeAbdulrahmanmmohamed If you say so, but not quite sure what you mean. Would you call Americans, Canadians, South Americans, Australians, New Zealanders etc. settlers as well? After how many generations are people born in a country not settlers any more?
@Koolkid If he is born there he is SA. Not his fault what happened before him. If we dig in your your DNA I'm sure you originally from somewhere else as well !! You're going to say 'sorry' for where you live ? Thought not.
Lekker man!
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
mine too. in 1992. book was called "het gevaar"
Was dit Koning van Katoren :)
@@HugovanVuuren1 Moontelik, ek kan nie regtig onthou nie, dit was jare terug
When I was in school, we had Domheids Macht, a Dutch book, as a prescribed work.
As a South African, I find it much easier to understand Flemish than Dutch
@Random Gaming The former one is spoken in Belgium
Agreed
Dutch and Flemish are almost identical@Random Gaming
The Flemish dialect of Dutch and the African dialect of Dutch are primarily built up from Northern dialects of Dutch, as the Northerners are the ones who were brought in as labourers. So when the Dutch expanded into Belgium, South Africa, and the Caribbean the labourers were often from the Northern parts of the Netherlands which were mostly farm settlements and not too rich in resources and money, which made them cheap labour.
That's why Afrikaans, Flemish, Surinamese Dutch and Northern Dutch dialects share a lexical similarity of 89%-95%.
@@donnyboy5589 What have you been smoking? The Dutch never 'expanded into Belgium' and spread their language there. In fact it's more accurate to say Dutch emerged in Belgium than in the Netherlands as Dutch is simply the language of the Salian Franks, who settled in Flanders and the (current) southern Netherlands.
People have always talked Dutch in Flanders, back when the language was developping there was no border between Belgium and the Netherlands.
The reason why Flemish and Dutch are basically 100% the same aside from some pronounciation is because of the standardisation of the Dutch language, which was basically a coproject between Flanders and the Netherlands, although probably a bit more input from the Netherlands.
You can still see how different Dutch was all over the low countries through dialects as limburgish, west-flemish, hollands, Gelders etc.
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.
Would you tell us more? Are your parents Dutch? Did you grow up in South Africa? Do you speak Afrikaans?
I love afrikaans as a dutch speakers.
Ive been listening to afrikaanse music and its great.
Somehow i feel connected to speakers of afrikaans.
Love it.
Hey can i ask you something? In south africa do you do your matrics exams in grade 10,11,12 or is it only in grade 12..
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.
I'm Swedish with good proficiency in English and also German (reading but not really speaking) but I clearly don't think I can understand Afrikaans near perfectly though... Die Antwoord are cool but I don't get their lyrics without translation, even in written form... Anyway Dutch often seems oddly familiar because Swedish was heavily influenced by Low German during the Hansa era, ca 13th-15th centuries and Low German is in many ways more closely connected to Dutch than to High German. Dutch is also kind of halfway between English and German, so sure, if you know both of those languages Dutch seems a bit like a missing link. But mostly you just recognize words here and there.
Jon Abelli Perhaps it was an exaggeration of an exaggeration then. Thanks!
I think even Afrikaners can't understand Die Antwoord half the time
I'm Afrikaans and I know English, Dutch, German and Swedish. Swedish feels like a mix between Afrikaans/Dutch and English to me. Swedish word order is more like English but Swedish vocabulary is more like Afrikaans/Dutch without the Latin influence on English.
Jon, trust me. Even we who speak Afrikaans as a Native language, can barely understand Die Antwoord. And then that's ignoring the fact that most of us just try to ignore it's existence.
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.
What nonsense you all say. Firstly, Flemish is not a language but a dialect of Dutch and there are only a few differences. When you look at Afrikaans it is very different grammatically speaking.
@Jou Moer Yess, but that’s the same as England English and Scottish English, that’s just the accent.
It could be because both of them were influenced to French to an extent. Or is that ridiculous?
@@rickflex515 Not strictly true. Before Standard Dutch was adopted at national levels, there was a dialect continuum across Flanders and the Netherlands. Standard Dutch itself was mostly just one of these dialects that was elevated in status; it's not like the other dialects somehow owe their existence to this one dialect. Some of the Flemish dialects, like West Flemish are very alive and very distant from Standard Dutch - further away than Afrikaans.
Of course Standard Dutch exerts a strong influence on all dialects with people unwittingly or by choice adopting words or grammatical forms from Standard Dutch into their dialects, so we can see some convergence over time.
Afrikaans developed from Dutch,Low German and Frisian ,that melted together in South Africa
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.
Interesting.nice info you got there.,👍
Whys my man writing a fucking gcse essay in the comment section
Very interesting information, thanks for that!
@@thomascannon7028 If that qualifies as a GCSE essay in your eyes, I shudder to think of the average education level in the British Isles :)
@philippe damerval, half the kids in my class cant spell their own name, we’re sixteen
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.
Ooh, Afrikaans in Arabic script! I'm not well-versed in that script, but I can decipher it. I own an 19th century book in Malay, printed in Arabic script. Do you know if any of that Afrikaans is online?
wait...Afrikaans in Arabic script? that's amazing!! never heard of it
Old Malay Afrikaans (written in Arabic script) is one of several, pretty distinct dialects of Afrikaans. If you consider the fact that all Afrikaans dialects stem from Old Dutch, it becomes apparent that Afrikaans is a sister language to Modern Dutch; not a daughter language, as academics insist. If those idiots go around classifying Afrikaans a daughter language simply because Modern Dutch and Afrikaans share a fairly consistent lexicon, they obviously need to have their academic career sacked.
Thank you for that... I feel bad that we (I) were never taught these things in apartheid school system by my ancestors (boere). There is such a rich Malay influence in our words, our food, our people, but yet it is so generally unknown and "versteek" . I need to go back and educate myself and de -condition myself not only on these but so many other South African realities.
@@daanlewis I guess you didn't pay attention in class. I come from a very conservative community and we were taught exactly this!
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.
Hi I am English speaking South African. I work with a lot of Afrikaans people - nicest people ever! Do not ever down SA as I have worked in the UK too. SA all the way! I think that Afrikaans is an easier language to learn than Dutch - I am learning Dutch now. Also, Afrikaners are polite. I am sure Dutch people have their merits but being too "direct" could be a problem. I find British people different as well.
Jy is heeltemal reg, en so se 'n kaaskoop!
Ek stem-dankie vir die info!
+Mr. Bonkers juist
sorry, maar het is "pannenkoek", niet "pannekoek" in het Nederlands, het was vroeger wel pannekoek maar spelling is veranderd
I once saw a vid of Charlize Theron giving an interview with a Flemish reporter. He spoke Flemish to her; she replied in Afrikaans.
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.
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.
yes i can understand German..if they speak slowley
Dankie dat U my taal geleer het. VAN Suid Afrika.
Hey can i ask you something? In south africa do you do your matrics exams in grade 10,11,12 or is it only in grade 12..
@@ninjapirate123 Grade 12 only, usually called your Matric year in South Africa.
Kyk, ons Afrikaners is nie baie slim nie, maar ons kan swaar goed optel...
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😂😆
I don't think it's offensive because I know how it's used in South Africa. But about half of my viewers are American, and I know a lot of them are immediately repulsed by the word because of their own history, so I was giving them a sort of soft introduction to the word.
Shojiro Katsuragi
Really? I'm South African and never use "coloured" but "mixed race" and I've yet to get my ass beaten up.
I double dare and triple dare a house slave to start it with me. If you don't have pink, peach, or beige skin and aren't of European descent, you're considered "coloured". Whether you're of African, Indian etc. descent or a mixture of two.
Bantu people will never claim the so-called coloured people as theirs, but saying you're coloured simply tells the world you aren't of European descent and nothing more!
Dis die gees!
house...slave?
wow
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 think the former colonial powers should foster close relationships with their former colonies. I think it would be of benefit to all countries.
@@SerialChiller1000 Humans in general should become closer. Not neo-colonialism, but countries joining together to help each other with common issues.
I started learning Dutch as a - unfortunately - native English speaker in Australia, and I'm thinking to myself "all of this sounds like old slang, I swear Deers used to be called Herts". I suppose it has the same feeling to me as going forward in time and somewhat understanding everything yet it's so alien. Or coming back to somewhere from your childhood and everything has changed. You basically needa get used to yourself again/relearn.
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..
Most Afrikaans speakers will understand Flemish easier than Dutch.
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.
you pronounce the word "Afrikaans" right. only Afrikaans means "African" as an adjetive therefore you can so the African language but not the africans/Afrikaans language. and btw the background information of the language and the historical events that you're providing us from are for as far as know correct;) Keep on the good work man, I really like your vids.
+Rybackz In South Africa Afrikaans is only used for the language and not as meaning "from Africa".
English speakers in South Africa pronounce it the same as "Moors".
I am Afrikaans and you can kind of phonetically spell boer out like "boohr", like boob but without the b and instead a trill "r" like in spanish
Boer you pronounce like book but a r at the end
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 😊
To mimic some Dutch people, just talk Afrikaans but pretend you have a hot potato in your mouth. An Afrikaner friend of mine burst out laughing when he first heard 2 Dutch guys speaking and after that called Dutch people ''die warme aardappel mense''
I have a question, do Afrikaners have their phone in Dutch or English
@@lemon8944 depends on what the user wants
@@simonh6371 die vriend van je heeft wel gelijk, maar ik denk dat hij praat over ABN/ Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands (Standaard Nederlands/Standard Dutch). Sommige provinciale dialecten lijken en klinken erg als Afrikaans. Toen ik in een Achterhoeksch dialect ging praten tegen een afrikaner verstond hij mij gewoon en dacht bijna dat ik ook een Afrikaner was.
@@lemon8944 English
I'm Dutch 🧡 and love the simplifying of the Dutch language into Afrikaans 🇿🇦 dankie!
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.
Exact same meaning i guess then too?
It would kinda make sense for Afrikaans to pick up some english words
@@user-xg8yy7yl1d Yes indeed it does have the exact same meaning
.
@@user-xg8yy7yl1d No, not exactly (but close to the same meaning).
Afrikaans is derived mostly from Dutch, German, with some influence from English and other languages (such as Khoisan). But I would be careful to conclude that the Afrikaans version of the bulk of this poem was borrowed / derived from English.
The direct translation of Afrikaans to English would be something like this...
My pen is my wonderland.
Becomes water in my hand.
In my pen is wonder ink.
Stories sing. Stories sink.
My stories walk. My stories stop.
My pen is my wonder mop.
Drink letters. Drink my ink.
My pen is blind. My stories shine.
That is just the coolest thing ever! Thanks for sharing 😊
So cool
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
Thanks for sharing that in English for us Chantel. A lot of us wouldn't have known. Very interesting, thank you :)
Hi Chantel! I was wondering if your surname is Turkish?
@Chantel Howell Doğan Dutch people travel a lot, but honestly if i came across a person that speaks 'Afrikaans' i would get an extra urge to learn about other people. I would love to speak afrikaans and learn about the rumors i heard about it. I talked to one afrikaanse person over the internet at some point and he mentioned something like 'Spoedvarke' i swear it was he was trying to say "emergency pig" only to later hear it means "Dangerous driver"
@@Redisia Dutch and South African are almost the same language, but sometimes differ a lot. Compare it with English and Scottish, or German and Austrian.
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.
And the fact that Afrikaans has some hilarious words that we native Dutch speakers find quite funny:
Chirurg - Snydokter
Lift - Hysbak
Bromfiets - Bromponie
...
+Mike Chavepeyer some time ago I set my minecraft in Afrikaans for fun...
I completely lost it when I read the Afrikaans word for creeper:
"sluipklapper"
Vind ik toch logischer. Zo ook het woord moltrein, vind ik een veel leuker woord.
perhaps a low german speaker would see dutch as a simplified version of german
Afrikaans has Chirurg( sjirurg ) it's just not used as much so Snydokter is the norm. Literally Cut-doctor.
There are some other funny ones like a skunk in Afrikaans is a "Stinkmuishond" a stink-mous-dog.
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.
Is south Africa better now then it used to be in the 80 and 90s?
Leopold The III, do you mean as in the government or the language?
@@vitoscalita Worse
Hey can i ask you something? In south africa do you do your matrics exams in grade 10,11,12 or is it only in grade 12..
@@ninjapirate123 Matric is another name for grade 12. But the students write end of year exams in grade 10, 11 and 12.
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.
Strangely enough, "Amper" is also a Dutch word, but instead of "Almost", it means "Barely"
Interesting right? It kinda means the opposite
***** Exactly. Wonder if the words are unrelated, the Malay word and the Dutch word, or if one group has it from the other and the meaning changed over time with one group...
Danii Iba It would be an incredible coincidence if they were unrelated
***** Agreed. But then it's strange why the words have such unrelated and almost opposite meaning in their respective language. It's like the English taking on the word "Aehnlich", which is German for "Similar", making it into "Annlish" and to mean " A separation". Language is a strange tool.
+Danii Iba Indonesian Malay has a lot of dutch vocabulary so it wouldn't surprise me if it was.
Fun fact "Afrikaans" is Dutch for "African"
Actually it is "Afrikaner" = African or from Africa.
Oh my goodness, he's talking about "African" as a general adjective, not as a person, you bumbling degenerates.
@Leon Hattingh What about "bumbling degenerate" is offensive? I'm sorry you took it that way.
@@avzarathustra6164 no genius - there are very distinctive meanings between Akrikaans, Afrikaner and Sjid Afrikaans. The first one is the name of the langauge itself and cannot be "bent" to mean something else. The second one is the group of people who are "whites" and who speak Afrikaans as home language hence a ethnic grouping. It is also the terminology used when they refer to the hated white oppressors of 50 million non whites albeit we are less than 4 mill of the population.. English speaking south africans are not referred to as Afrikaners. South Africa is the name of the country itself, used in that context only - hence all citizens will refer to themselves as South Africans. Africans refer to people who are from Africa. African in Afrikaans is "Afrikaner" - so when politicians refer to the hated Afrikaner they are actually including themselves - that is their stupitity I guess. So if you wanf to call us dsgenaritive go the mirror and see one.
@@zommellemmoz3999 Oh my God, I know. And I never called South Africans degenerates, your comment is unnecessary. I don't need an essay on what I already said. "Afrikaner" refers to a person. I KNOW.
The way you say "boere". That caught me off guard 😂
Yeah, I’ve been getting slaughtered for that for a few years now. 😅
@@Langfocus To pronounce "boer," think of the English word "tour," as in tour guide. Replace the t with the b and give the "r" at the end a slight trill (tip of the tongue hits the roof of the mouth). That will be very close.
Boer means farmer!.
@@ujwiersma8482 No no no. It's literally "boo-ruh." Say "boo" like a ghost, then trill the "r" as you described. So singular boer is pronounced "boo-rrr" and plural boere is pronounced "boo-ruh".
Thanks you this was the comment i was looking for,,, now i can continue watching the video again💪💪
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
You missed a biggie ... the famous Afrikaans double negative!!!
Dit kom ook voor in Portugees. EK beskou nog 'n snaakse voorkoms daarvan die feit dat 'n vraag in spaans begin met 'n onderstebo vraagteken en eindig met 'n gewone, regop vragteken! Dan kom dit voor in die engels wat swart Amerikaners praat "He ain't nobody". Taal is en bly maar 'n deurmekaar besigheid.
Grommpy Wow you did not pay attention to the parts in the video were he clearly points out that ch became g and that we dropped vowels in certain words. It is ‘tog’ not ‘toch’ and ‘sê’ not ‘seg’ (no such word in either language that I’m aware of). Oh and it is ‘dit’ not ‘dat’. Unless you are creating some new language here?
R. Mo Die dubbel negatief kom in ander tale van Latynse oorsprong voor, soos Frans. Ek dink Afrikaans is die enigste Germaanse taal met dit.
niks daarvan ! in het portugees heb je geen dubbel ontkenning! ....Não, eu acho que não......toch wel , mijn excuses.
en toch zeggen veel mensen : "ik heb nooit geen problemen gehad met enz..."
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.
This is not completely true though. In afrikaans we also use the ee sound and the oo and the aa and the uu sound a lot. The double pronunciation will always be accompanied by some thing like this "ë". Thus you get the word "slee" which is a sled in English. The plural for this word " slee " is " sleë " . The ee is simply the drawn out sound where as eë is spoken as eje thus sleje??? difficult to pronouns this, as there is no equivalent in English that I can think of, but you do get the idea, I hope....
Korné Soldaat olijk wordt toch nog best veel gebruikt?
@@LMvdB02 Ik ken niemand die dit woord nog gebruikt.
@@HasselnodderTube Dan ga je met een ander soort mensen om...
I am also Dutch and could see how the Southern accents in the Netherlands might sound more familiar to someone speaking Afrikaans. As a Dutch person learning Afrikaans, I think you would have a definite advantage if you came from the East or South of the Netherlands as those dialects are older than the Western ones. I don't agree with you on the word 'olijk'. I still use the word 'olijk' quite often, even though it might sound old-fashioned to some other native speakers. I love that word, just like the word 'guitig'. There aren't good translations for those words in English, so I treasure them as being very typically Dutch.. :)
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😂😭
Afrikaans en Nederlands is baie soortgelyk, jy kan seker vir my verstaan
Cool to see you use 'dead weird' then, colloquial Northern English usually
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.
Actually it depends on where in the Netherlands the person comes from. This has to do with the fact that people from the northern and western part of the country pronounce a lot of words differently and use new words (meanwhile we keep using the old words in the south and east)
Same
Yes!
@@pepin8277 and Flemish is spoken in the south part of Dutch area .
I think Flemish is generally considered to be the Dutch dialect most easily understood by Afrikaans speakers.
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.
veel in gemeen met "Plat Deutsch", sie mussen nicht die dialekten vergessen! :-)
Lara Sophia - Auch Deutscher Eltern von Süd Afrika
Having lived in South Africa, I learned to read, speak and write Afrikaans by myself, and didn't find it difficult. I live at the present in Portugal where I have Dutch friends. My wife and I speak to them in Afrikaans and they answer us back in Dutch and we understand (ons verstaan mekaar) one another pretty well. At the moment I'm busy learning Dutch by myself.
Dan ben je goed bezig Lara. Ik hoop dat jij een keer op vakantie kunt gaan in Nederland. Groetjes!
Caner Birgül not easily but good enough I suppose.
Thank you for presenting Afrikaans on your channel and creating awareness of our beautiful language.
Hey can i ask you something? In south africa do you do your matrics exams in grade 10,11,12 or is it only in grade 12..
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
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!
that's also the vowel you use in the 'oe' for 'boer' (dutch for 'farmer').
I don't mind it when people mispronounce the language, but 'bo-ers' is repeated so much, it's lightly aggrevating.
Very interesting. I didn't know that (Afrikaans person here)
you have a very old frisian name btw Mulder
Jorrit Bekkema It's not just Frisian, it's just (I think) middle Dutch for 'molenaar' in modern Dutch or 'miller' in English.
Aawh yes my mistake I looked it up and it's more popular in the north but not typical Frisian I just happen to know multiple people with the surname Mulder in Friesland. Below a link with info.
www.cbgfamilienamen.nl/nfb/detail_naam.php?gba_lcnaam=mulder&gba_naam=Mulder&nfd_naam=Mulder&operator=eq&taal=
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.
Lol goeie probeerslag - u bedoel Weskaap. (English: western cape)
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.
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)
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.
Flemish is seen by many as a more authentic form of Dutch because people from Flanders shared their country with the French speaking Walloons and they took pride in their language. "Dutch" Dutch was never affected by such a language war and let itself be influenced more by other languages: especially English but also German. As a Dutchman I would say that Flemish people seem to have done a better job in keeping foreign elements out of their language. Because Afrikaans has it's origins in an early form of Dutch I can only imagine that Flemish is a bit more recognisable.
Ek stem. Vlaams is baie makliker om te verstaan as Nederlands🌍
@@ricahrdb Yes sure, because they use so many French words of course..
I'm Dutch but go to a British school my teacher is afrikaans and we can easily understand each over
that's cool
Joep Koehof *other
Ik hou van Nederland!
Dit is toevallig...
As an Afrikaans speaking person new to the Netherlands, I found this video to be very informative and well presented. Thank you!!
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).
Hey can i ask you something? In south africa do you do your matrics exams in grade 10,11,12 or is it only in grade 12..
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!
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 :)
Thanks Zoe! I'm glad to hear it!
What languages can you speak ? I'm curious !
+File Collins Well he makes his videos in english and he lives/works in Japan, and he's talked extensively about how his first love was Hebrew, so at least three, maybe more. Tagalog, also? I'm not sure
+File Collins I'm Greek so I speak Greek (plus two Greek diallects) Also my 2nd mother tongue is Russian. I've learned English and now I'm learning Spanish :) What about you?
What are the two Greek dialects you speak?
This was a great and informative video.
Rock on dude.
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.
Ek is van Namibië af, ek kan Afrikaans praat 😊
this video annoys me. Where did he get those stats on Afrikaans speakers in Namibia? We don't collect data based on race, since 1990. I assume he is merely guessing.
@@writinghealth there is a 610 page PDF regarding named "southafricacount00byrn" in his sources there is a possible source. Though i dont have the time to read 610 pages.
Awe my fellow namibian, hulykit?
@@writinghealth There are lots of Afrikaans speakers in Namibia. Also many German speakers.
well you got cities like bloemfontein in Namibia isnt it? plus german language that helps a lot i think. ik kan het Afrikaans een beetje verstaan als men langzaam spreekt! i got a bible in Afrikaans its quitte nice to read because you know the stories basically
A comparison of afrikaans Dutch and flemish would be interesting
Afrikaans is closer to Flemish.
A Greek friend of mine used the greek word for a 'mess' (being made). He said 'hamors' (not sure about the spelling) and I was surprised he knew the Afrikaans word which is 'gemors'.
So it seems our Afrikaans language has loaned words from whomever set foot on our shores.
There is no difference between Flemish and Dutch, they keep spelling competitions together on TV.
The pronouncement and choices off the uses of words may be different sometimes, but these are dialects, just as different as between Dutch provinces differ among themselves in dialect.
@@rickoshea8138 No?
@@utilitymonster8267 Ek weet nie, meneer. Flaams klink vir my nader an Afrikaans as Neederlands. Miskien is ek verkeerd.
Wat is nou einlik jou vraag?
Thanks for this very thorough, well-informed and reliable introduction to a fascinating topic! Excellent! (like all your videos btw)
Hey, my home language is Afrikaans and I live in South Afrika. The histoy is correct, well that's what we learned here
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.
as 'n Hollander, ek het baie jare in Suid Afrika gewoon. ek vind in algemeen dat Nederlanders vinniger praat, en dat woorde aanmekaar gesnoer word, en ook die verskillende dialekte. Afrikaans in die Kaap klink deeglik, maar in die (ex)Transvaal klink dit traag en grof..Gauteng, Maphumalanga, ens.
Glockenberg, what you wrote is exactly my experience.
Glockenberg Afrikaans is the language of oppression.
Vinni Davinci
Really, why is Spanish, Portuguese and most inexplicably English exempted? No really, the fact that English is not mentioned baffles me. The British subjugated the Xhosa and Zulu here and humiliated the Zulu King as a prisoner of war, but their language is the language of liberation, I suppose? You are a fucking idiot that should never voice an opinion again, lest it infects the rest of humanity with your stupid.
Vinni Davinci , So is English, Spanish, Portugese, Arab, French etc....
Wow! You must have done a lot of research and I learnt things about my own language that I never knew. Thank you!
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.
cool to see people coming back to these old videos to know how about langauge history. im from flanders so i make an effort but afrikaan's is definitely a seperate language from dutch. its quite a bit more mutually understandable then english or german but im not gonna go into it thinking itll be a breeze anymore
Just taken an interest in Afrikaans after RWC19.
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.
As an Afrikaans first language speaker I really enjoyed this, dankie. :)
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
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!
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 ♥️
Good for you. Were are you from?
So how is it going? It's been a year?
So am I
I would like to do the same. How did you start ?
Julle is defenitief nie van Suid Afrika nie, meeste mense in skool haat dit
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.
The spelling of Afrikaans was actually based on a radical proposal for the entire Dutch language late 19th century, proposed by Kollewijn. In the end, only parts of this proposed reform were implemented in Dutch itself, whereas almost all of it was implemented in Afrikaans.
nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschiedenis_van_de_Nederlandse_spelling
a language is a living thing so it kept going on from 17th century Dutch
It makes sense what you say. However, as an Afrikaans speaker, Dutch sounds older (again just because I am use to Afrikaans). Basically like an English speaker listening to an old-English speaker but depending on will language you grew up with will depend how the other person sounds like.
***** My fathers Dutch and he said he can basically understand Afrikaans they were not totally isolated from Holland. The Dutch helped finance their railway I had a relative who was a Dutch volunteer in the Boer army in the Boer war.
+securitus Definitely! Dutch and Afrikaans is 90% - 95% similar. So really only the accent and pace of speaking can sometimes hinder understanding. There is an interview on youtube just search for "Charlize Theron Dutch repoter" it should pop up. Afrikaans and Dutch people can understand each other relatively well. From what I have heard, we understand the dutch better than they understand us as well as Flemmish is even easier for us.
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
Jy kom daar, hou net aan leer!
Amper daar
Amper daar. Glad nie te sleg nie
lekker man
Ok, jy kom nog daar
Wow, you had to do an amazing amount of research for this video!
As a native Dutch speaker i can undertand Die Antwoord lyrics pretty well ;)
Ah yes< soomer lekker daardie musiek" lol!
but would you want to
Like the one about a Rich Bitch? LOL
No, Die Antwoord, misrepresent us!
WAT KIJK JIJ? POES
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".
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.
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.
Yup, this is true. I can easily understand about 80% or so of written Dutch online but I have to listen a few times to understand spoken Dutch.
Mijn ervaring is dat enige dagen met elkaar omgaan perfect verstaan en begrijpen met zich mee brengt, de woordenschat in beide talen is grotendeels bijna identiek.
That goes both ways. As a native German speaker I can also understand like 50%-60% of written Dutch and also Afrikaans. The difficult thing with the latter is maybe the distinct vocabulary. However I am from Austria which is very south-eastern. In my experience northern German have an easier understanding also the spoken language
Ik ben een Nederlander en kan Afrikaners goed verstaan, zolang ze maar langzaam praten. De taal is verrassend identiek.
Kan je ook Nederlandse films kyken?
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".
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.
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.
There are some interesting questions here. Some of the grammatical simplifications, such as a missing preterite tense, are found in other Germanic dialects (e.g. German dialects).
The disappearance of grammatical gender and complete loss of verb conjugation by person seem, well, a little creolish.
No other Germanic language (save for English, if you consider it to be Germanic) has dropped grammatical genders and a Germanic koiné would likely have retained some semblance of grammatical gender given how integral it is to Germanic languages.
Verb conjugation in Afrikaans is also suspiciously simple. It's true that several Germanic languages have merged their 3rd person verb conjugation forms (Dutch and e.g. Swiss German) and a few, like Swedish actually merged them all. But Swedish is unlikely to help us here since 1) Northern Germanic languages were not present in sufficient numbers to make a dent and 2) Swedish only recently merged its verb forms.
However, I remain firmly unconvinced that the double negative is the result of creolization or that the possessive "se" is a product of creolization. The latter seems far more like the merging of "z'n" (zijn) and the genitive possessive (e.g. "Peters auto" in Dutch), though of course the merging process would have been helped by a large group of second language speakers.
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?
No, schijf means 'Disc'. Like a DVD/Blu-ray or your Hard-Drive (Harde schijf). Or the ball on an airhockey table is called a schijf. Speaking in slang it could also mean XTC pills(mdma).
Exceptionally well researched and presented! (Compliments from an Afrikaans speaker)
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.
Lol u came down to the comments to find an afrikaanse comment
Wel jy het dit gekry lol
Edit:Nice amount of likes
Awe😂
If u speak English, I'm kinda irritated than u did not put "an"
@@justuraveragecunt9005 satisfied?
@@Zero._Fps yes, thank u
Lol
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.
BTW: you spelled 'kombers' wrong. Afrikaans only uses the letter 'c' for a small number of names and one word; 'Christen' which means 'Christian'. Also; 'baie' also means 'a lot'
Africans are black in color we are not of mixed race we stay black this is like riding the black train . So anyone can claim to be African ? I think not .
@@Maxinemorr22 Huh? Wut? I think you replied to the wrong comment...
Also 'My hand is in warm water.' stays the same in both languages.
@@arslanthelion9373 Close, but not quite. 'Warm' in Afrikaans means 'Hot' in English. The Afrikaans word 'Louw' means 'Warm' in English. The difference is trivial, but it's there.
"amper" is a frequently used Dutch word, so.....derived from the Malayan word "hampir"???
@@ccatarinajm7114 I would say, as a dutch guy, is that the example is exactly wrong. Amper does not mean almost. It means: almost not. To put in order: Totally, Almost, Almost not, and not. Dutch: Helemaal, Bijna, Amper, en Niet.
@@youpie24 Amper means barely
UK English speaker here, do you reckon this has anything to do with our term "ampersand" which means this symbol: & ?
@@daddyalien Don't think so. According to wiki ampersand is somehow derived from Latin 'et per se'.
@@RsGhost1 I'd say "amper" translates to "just barely"
very sad that double negatives didn't get mentioned that's one of the coolest differences between afrikaans and dutch :'(
dit was genoem...
Was dit nie genoem nie? :)
ek het nie gesien dat dit genoem was nie - double negative example right there :)
It's not a difference with all dialects to be fair. I've heard quite a lot of double negatives in my Brabantian dialect. That said those are less mandatory and formulaic than the double negative in Afrikaans. A second negative will often be added for emphasis while stsndard Dutch has a second negative negate the first.
haha thats very funny to see, I didnt know!
That just makes it sound cuter eventhough its very sad xD
I'm not even lying when I say one learnt so much from this video than I ever did in high school. Amazing!
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.
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!!!
Can you do a video talking about Romanian?
I really want to see this one, since it's the most unknown romance language and I'm very curious about it.
Romansch is probably the most unknown, but Romanian a close second ;)
Catalan is also quite unknown
Yes, Catalan and Romansch are both fairly unknown minor Romance languages. But of the major Romance languages, Romanian is by far the least known.
And before anyone gets upset by this comment, I define major as being the primary language of one or more countries and having a native speaker population greater than 10 million
I don't think he's going to do a video on Romanian because he already done a brief video on it. Where he basically talked about the language, only in not as much detail. But still would me cool to see a vid about Romanian, because its a very unique romance language.
Dankie, dit was mooi.
I'm a Belgian (dutch speaker) myself, and when I was travelling in SA a few years ago, I was able to understand approx 80%+ of what was said on the radio news. When talking to people in the cape town region, it was more difficult to understand people. The native Afrikaans speakers had trouble understanding my dutch often times, but I have a rather stong dialect. So I guess its indeed easier to understand the language for both sides if the speaker sticks to the standard as much as possible. Loved SA and all of its people btw. Hope to go back there some day. (great wine also…)
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.
Du snakker bokmål?
@@Heretogasunu
Ja.
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 speak balushi and it's self has different accents and terms based on geographic areas
Zain A
like most languages
Anyone who has any scientific linguistic training knows that there is no such thing as a pure language. Also, you cannot construct a proto-language from a single child, that is literally impossible.
However, this does not devalue Baluchi as a language. One need only look at its location on a map to have their interest piqued. And, like you said, it is in fact a possible descendant of either Median or Parthian. I am also very interested in a possible Balochi video.
S.A. H.
yea it is not "pure' it is the one with the least foreign influence on grammar and vocabulary it from the modern iranian family. It helped construct proto iranian but it wan not the only one that helped obviously. I agree with the rest of what you said.
yo yo In many cases, unless there is a religious liturgy or a strict and powerful force causing the language to be conservative, it will innovate on its own rather than borrow from other tongues, and moreso the larger it is. Baluchi is not a very small language, it is spoken by almost eight million people natively. It may have been resistant to borrowing but, without at least one of those two forces I mentioned above, internal changes are not easily avoided.
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
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.
It was a funny experience travelling to South Africa as a Dutch speaker and spending time with local non-Afrikaans speakers.
I was able to explain them the meaning of the names of their streets, that they didn't know about.
Very nice video. I didn't know that "Boer" was pronounced with a diphthong in English. In Dutch (and Afrikaans), it's just an "oo" sound (and it just means "farmer").
Also, AFAIK, "kraal" is also a Dutch word, though I believe it's out of fashion in current Dutch (I don't have evidence for it though, it could just as well be that we got it from English or so)
For the "ij" to "y" shift, well, old Dutch didn't have an "y", but had a single "ij" character (which was only replaced with two letters since the computer era, to fit in the different alphabets like ASCII). This can still be seen in capitalisation of the letters, where you always need to capitalise the full "ij". F.e. the river "IJzer" shouldn't be written as "Ijzer"). In Flemish spelling on the other hand, the "ij" character wasn't used, and we also used the "y" (see my family name, or the old spelling for the river IJzer, which is "Yser"). However, this difference wasn't important until printing arrived, as the hand-written "ij" and "y" are pretty indistinguishable.
Small anecdote: I was once reading a webpage in Afrikaans and wondering who had written it as it was full of spelling mistakes ... only after a paragraph I figured out the page was in Afrikaans rather than Dutch
According to my Dutch teacher, the "ij" used to be a double "i" but the second one was elongated for some reason. It used to be pronounced as a long "i" sound (like English "ee") and still is in some dialects, I think.
Your teacher was correct, before the standardization of Dutch spelling there were several ways to indicate long vowels. An example is "OE", which in modern spelling sounds like German "U", but in middle Dutch often signified the sound currently written as "OO" (like in English "Over"). That same sound, however, could also be signified with "OI", a combination today only found in Dutch in loanwords, mostly from French (and mostly pronounced similar to French, an exception being "notoir" (notorious), which can also be pronounced with a long "O": noh-tohr). The spelling "OO" was also occasionally used.
That same mechanism was applied when elongating the vowel "i". "ii" became "ij", but I am not sure when the sound shift occurred, nor how universal that shift was. A similar shift occurred in English: Chaucer most probably would have pronounced "fire" as "fee-re".
Yes, as a native dutch speaker I can confirm that kraal is a word here and is very much still in use, however, it doesn't have the same meaning; in dutch it translates to "bead".
Kraal in afrikaans have two meanings , either a bead as you say or it can mean a corral where you keep animals in.
Kraal in Dutch has 2 meanings, beads and corral; the Afrikan version obviously came from Dutch but the word did originally come from the portuguese language. Its a bad example for him to use.
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
Maybe they should introduce Afrikaans to Wallonia. Then they will be speaking Dutch/ Flemish in no time :D
This is one of the best channels on CZcams
We use the word 'amper' in the Netherlands too with the same meaning, so...
Well, not exactly the same. 'Amper' in Dutch translates to 'barely'.
As for the question, I can read Afrikaans, but I'm usually not able to understand it when it's spoken.
+Jakromha you speak Dutch?
Amper means 'hardly', whereas Indonesian 'hampir' means 'almost'. Not quite the same. It's interesting though. Some etymologists claim that the word traveled from Java, through Afrikaans, where 'amper .. nie' [almost not] was the way to say 'hardly', and then to Dutch, where people never use an extra negation. That would explain the change in meaning.
Amper is used in Afrikaans for almost, hardly, barely, etc. We also use the word netnet for barely. But amper can be used in all the cases mentioned above.
***** Netnet would be similar to 'net aan' in Dutch then.
Some commented here that Dutch was taught in South African schools up until the 80s. This might give the impression that it was taught as a major subject, which is not accurate. (Although at University level it is indeed called : Afrikaans-Nederlands.)
What I can remember is that from the 10th to the 12th grade Afrikaans first language students (thus native Afrikaans speaking school children) had 1 or 2 prescribed Dutch books per year. (this was similar to having at least 1 Shakespeare - thus not modern English - prescribed book per year, even for English second language students.)
Karakter (Character) was one of my books - and I loved watching the movie years later, especially when it won as best foreign language movie at the Oscars in 1998.
So yes, Afrikaans speaking people normally understand Dutch better than what Dutch speakers understand Afrikaans.
Dat hangt van de flexibiliteit van de Nederlander af.
Dutch was replaced by Afrikaans in schools in the early 1900's. There is an anecdote of an Afrikaans school boy who was so glad that Dutch was now much easier since he learned it in Afrikaans, as he put it. He asked whether the children can't learn English in Afrikaans as well.
I remember meeting two flight attendants in Taipei who worked for KLM (Dutch Royal Airlines) (long story short: they were Dutch, I was Afrikaans). We had a very short but fun conversartion on the subway. The basic rule is that Afrikaans and Flemish (Flemish, I think is spoken in the south of The Netherlands) are the closest to each other. Also, the slower you speak, the better each one will grasp and understand each other. When I got to my stop it felt SO good to say to them: "totsiens" (goodbye). And they replied with "totsiens". Man, it felt so good! :D
@@ross6753 Interesting I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing :)
@@ross6753 That is correct. Although, in Afrikaans we never say "jy is welkom". Technically it is correct, but it is directly translated from English "you're welcome", so a proper Afrikaans reply, when someone says "thank you", would be "plesier".
I am a bilingual South African and I learnt so much from your video! Wow, thank you. Wish we learnt this in school.