Afrikaans Language Course

Afrikaans is a West Germanic-based creole language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and, to a lesser extent, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It evolved from the Dutch vernacular of Holland spoken by the European (Dutch, French, and German) settlers in South Africa, where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics during the 18th century. It is a developed Creole Language. Although Afrikaans has adopted words from other languages, including German and the Khoisan languages, an estimated 90 to 95% of the vocabulary of Afrikaans is of Dutch origin. As a result, there is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, especially in written form. With about seven million native speakers in South Africa, or 13.5% of the population, it is the third-most-spoken language in the country. Estimates of the total number of Afrikaans speakers range between 15 and 23 million. It has the widest geographic and racial distribution of all the 11 official languages of South Africa and is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language.