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In April 2009, SABC3 started screening several Afrikaans-language programmes. [87] There is a groundswell movement within Afrikaans to be inclusive, and to promote itself along with the indigenous official languages. In Namibia, the percentage of Afrikaans speakers declined from 11.4% (2001 Census) to 10.4% (2011 Census).
Worldwide, Afrikaans and Dutch as native or second language are spoken by approximately 46 million people. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] particularly in written form.
Afrikaans, a language primarily descended from Dutch, is the mother tongue of Afrikaners and most Cape Coloureds. [9] According to the South African National Census of 2022, 10.6% of South Africans claimed to speak Afrikaans as a first language at home, making it the third most widely spoken home language in the country. [10]
Indo-European languages, while not indigenous to Africa, are spoken in South Africa and Namibia (Afrikaans, English, German) and are used as lingua francas in Liberia and the former colonies of the United Kingdom , former colonies of France and of Belgium , former colonies of Portugal , former colonies of Italy , former colonies of Spain and ...
Afrikaans is also spoken widely across the centre and north of the country, as a second (or third or even fourth) language by Black or Indigenous South Africans (which, in South Africa, popularly means SiNtu-speaking populations) living in farming areas. The 2011 census recorded the following distribution of first language speakers: [6]
[29] [30] Dutch Reformed churches commonly conducted Afrikaans services in the morning, followed by services in English and indigenous African languages in the afternoon. [31] An Afrikaans-language school, Bothashof, was established in 1911 in Bulawayo.
[6] [7] [8] The language is now offered as an optional subject in many schools throughout the country. [9] Indigenous languages are included in the school syllabus at primary level. From secondary level English is the medium of instruction. English is the main lingua franca in the north and Afrikaans in the south.
An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by its indigenous peoples. Indigenous languages are not necessarily national languages but they can be; for example, Aymara is both an indigenous language and an official language of Bolivia .