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The members of the Language Association came to realize that Dutch would be in a much stronger position to compete with the English language in South Africa if its spelling were to be simplified, and so convened a joint conference of Afrikaners from the Cape Colony, Natal, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal to suggest simplification of the ...
The Dutch alphabet in 1560, still including the long s. The modern Dutch alphabet, used for the Dutch language, consists of the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Depending on how y is used, six (or five) letters are vowels and 20 (or 21) letters are consonants. In some aspects, the digraph ij behaves as a single letter.
Van Dale Groot woordenboek van de Nederlandse taal, first published in 1874 and today in its 16th edition, is the best-known Dutch language dictionary. There are also two notable Dutch word lists (spelling dictionaries): het Groene Boekje, the "Green Booklet", the official Dutch orthography published by the Dutch Language Union since 1954
Between 1910 and 1961 Dutch was a co-official language of South Africa, together with English. In 1961 Dutch was replaced by Afrikaans as a co-official language. However, between 1925 and 1984 Dutch and Afrikaans were seen as two varieties of the same language by the Official Languages of the Union Act, 1925 and later article 119 of the South ...
The term Afrikaners or Afrikaans people [6] [7] [8] is generally used in modern-day South Africa for the white Afrikaans-speaking population of South Africa (the largest group of White South Africans) encompassing the descendants of both the Boers, and the Cape Dutch who did not embark on the Great Trek.
Consonant comparison between Standard Dutch and Afrikaans Pronunciation Examples Standard Dutch Afrikaans Standard Dutch Afrikaans z /z/ voiced s /z/ s /s/ zuid /ˈzœʏ̯t/ analyse /aːnaːˈlizə/ suid /ˈsœɪ̯t/ analise /ɑːnɑːˈlisə/ starting v /v/ /f/ vier /ˈvir/ vier /ˈfir/ middle v /v/ w /v/ haven /ˈɦaːvən/ hawe /ˈɦɑːvə/
However, few place names in South Africa of Dutch origin begin with Y, with the exception of Yzerfontein in the Western Cape. The spelling of the name of the town, which means iron fountain, is based on the old Dutch word for iron, yzer. [54] It was also previously written as Ijsterfontein. [55]
Afrikaans is considered to be a daughter language of Dutch [1] [2] and it, by contrast, is vibrant and has completely displaced Dutch in southern Africa, primarily South Africa and Namibia. Though not a majority-held position, it is considered by some linguists to be a creole because of its simplified grammar relative to Dutch. [3] [4]