Afrikaans

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 25. Chapters: Differences between Afrikaans and Dutch, Paul Roos Gymnasium, Afrikaans grammar, Afrikaans speaking population in South Africa, Die Stem van Suid-Afrika, Afrikaans Language Monument, Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool, Arabic Afrikaans, Windhoek Afrikaanse Privaatskool, List of Afrikaans artists, Afrikaans exonyms, Peter Blum, Afrikaans Wikipedia, Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners, Klipgooi, Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein, List of English words of Afrikaans origin, Bittereinder, Gert Vlok Nel, Longest word in Afrikaans, KykNET, Tweede Asem, ASTV, List of Afrikaans language poets, Die Taalkommissie, Durban North College, Jeugland Hoërskool. Excerpt: Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch. Although Afrikaans adopted words from languages such as Malay, Portuguese, the Bantu languages, and the Khoisan languages, an estimated 90 to 95 percent of Afrikaans vocabulary is ultimately of Dutch origin. Therefore, differences with Dutch often lie in a more regular morphology, grammar, and spelling of Afrikaans. There is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages¿especially in written form¿although it is easier for Dutch-speakers to understand Afrikaans than the other way around. With about 6 million native speakers in South Africa, or 13.3 percent of the population, it is the third most spoken mother tongue in the country. It has the widest geographical and racial distribution of all the official languages of South Africa, and is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language. It is the majority language of the western half of South Africäthe provinces of the Northern Cape and Western Cape¿and the primary language of the coloured and white communities. In neighbouring Namibia, Afrikaans is spoken in 11 percent of households, mainly concentrated in the capital Windhoek and the southern regions of Hardap and Karas. Widely spoken as a second language, it is a lingua franca of Namibia. While the number of total speakers of Afrikaans is unknown, estimates range between 15 and 23 million. There are many parallels to the Dutch orthography conventions and those used for Afrikaans. There are 26 letters. In Afrikaans, many consonants are dropped from the earlier Dutch spelling. For example, slechts ('only') in Dutch becomes slegs in Afrikaans. Part of this is because the spelling of Afrikaans words is considerably more phonemic than that of Dutch. For example, Afrikaans and some Dutch dialects make no distinction between and , having me