Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The name of the language comes directly from the Dutch word Afrikaansch (now spelled Afrikaans) [n 3] meaning 'African'. [12] It was previously referred to as 'Cape Dutch' (Kaap-Hollands or Kaap-Nederlands), a term also used to refer to the early Cape settlers collectively, or the derogatory 'kitchen Dutch' (kombuistaal) from its use by slaves of colonial settlers "in the kitchen".
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]
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 .
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language spoken widely in South Africa and Namibia, and to a lesser extent in Botswana and Zimbabwe. It evolved from the Dutch vernacular [ 17 ] [ 18 ] of South Holland ( Hollandic dialect ) [ 19 ] [ 20 ] spoken by the mainly Dutch colonists of what is now South Africa, where it gradually began to develop ...
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 African Constitution of 1961. After a short period (1984-1994) where Afrikaans and English were ...
Although Afrikaans borrows some lexical and syntactical structures from other languages, including Malay, Portuguese, Khoisan languages, [17] Bantu languages, [18] and to a lesser extent Low German, Dutch speakers are confronted with fewer non-cognates when listening to Afrikaans than the other way around.
[17] [23] Culturally and linguistically, they are divided into Afrikaans-speaking and English-speaking groups. [citation needed] According to the 2022 census, one of the top three most spoken languages is Afrikaans (10,6%). The first census in South Africa in 1911 showed that 'Whites' made up 22% of the population; who declined to 16% in 1980. [24]
[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 (Namibian Afrikaans) in the south. English ...