a question concerning language?

Question

I heard about a language that they speak in South Africa called Afrikaans. Do you maybe have a clue of its origins?

Answer 1

It was original a form of Dutch, brought over by Dutch settlers.

Answer 2

Dutch. South Africa was first colonised by the Dutch, then the English fought them for it in the Boer War.

Answer 3

It's derived from Dutch.

Answer 4

Dutch.

Answer 5

I think it is a mix of Dutch, Portugese and English.

Answer 6

It derives from Dutch.

Answer 7

itz very similar to dutch and was introduced when the ducth went over there n their own language got mixed wit the native one or something n got modified. the accent soundz a bit lyk an australian accent too.

Answer 8

It is from the Dutch settlers there.

Answer 9

It derives from Dutch but also has English,French,Portuguese and local African dialects in it.!!!

Answer 10

It's a simplified form of Dutch. The first white settlers in South Africa were from the Netherlands, although it became part of the British Empire and English was adopted as the official language.The name Afrikaans is simply the Dutch word for African, i.e. the African form of the Dutch language. The dialect became known as "Cape Dutch". Later, Afrikaans was sometimes also referred to as "African Dutch" or "Kitchen Dutch", although some now consider these terms pejorative. Afrikaans was considered a Dutch dialect until the late 19th century, when it began to be recognised as a distinct language, and it gained equal status with Dutch and English as an official language in South Africa in 1925. Dutch remained an official language until the new 1961 constitution finally stipulated the two official languages in South Africa to be Afrikaans and English (although, curiously, the 1961 constitution still had a sub-clause stipulating that the word "Afrikaans" was also meant to be referring to the Dutch language). The 1925 decision led Dutch to enter disuse and be replaced by Afrikaans for all purposes.

There are basically three dialects, of which the northeastern variant (which developed into a literary language in the Transvaal) forms the basis of the written standard. Within the Dutch-speaking zones of the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname, there is greater divergence among the dialects than there is between standard Dutch and standard Afrikaans. Although Afrikaans knows some typical Hollandic tones, there particularly exist striking similarities between Afrikaans and West Flemish.

It was originally the dialect that developed among the Afrikaner Protestant settlers and the indentured or slave workforce brought to the Cape area in southwestern South Africa by the Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie — VOC, Afrikaans: Nederlandse Oos-Indiese Kompanjie - NOIK) between 1652 and 1705. A relative majority of these first settlers were from the United Provinces (now Netherlands), though there were also many from Germany, a considerable number from France, and some from Norway, Portugal, Scotland, and various other countries. The indentured workers and slaves were South Indians, Malays, and Malagasy in addition to the indigenous Khoi and Bushmen.

Afrikaans is linguistically closely related to 17th and 18th century Dutch dialects spoken in North and South Holland and, by extension, to modern Dutch. Today, speakers of each language can make themselves understood fairly easily by speakers of the other.

Afrikaans grammar and spelling is simpler than that of Dutch, in the same sense and to approximately the same degree that English grammar is simpler than German grammar. Afrikaans also has a more diverse vocabulary, including words of English, Indian, Malay, Malagasy, Khoi, San and Bantu origins. Other closely related languages include Low German spoken in northern Germany and the Netherlands, German, and English. Cape Dutch vocabulary diverged from the Dutch vocabulary spoken in the Netherlands over time as Cape Dutch absorbed words from other European settlers, slaves from East India and Indonesia's Malay, and native African languages. Research by J. A. Heese indicates that as of 1807, 36.8% of the ancestors of the White Afrikaans speaking population were of Dutch ancestry, 35% were German, 14.6% were French and 7.2% non-white (of African and/or Asian origins). Heese's figures are questioned by other researchers, however, and the non-white component, in particular, quoted by Heese is very doubtful.

The linguist Paul Roberge suggests that the earliest "truly Afrikaans" texts are doggerel verse from 1795 and a dialogue transcribed by a Dutch traveller in 1825. Printed material among the Afrikaners at first used only proper European Dutch. By the mid-19th century, more and more were appearing in Afrikaans, which was very much still regarded as a set of spoken regional dialects.

In 1861, LH Meurant published his Zamenspraak tusschen Klaas Waarzegger en Jan Twyfelaar, which is considered by some to be the first authoritative Afrikaans text. Abu Bakr Effendi also compiled his Arabic Afrikaans Islamic instruction book between 1862 and 1869, although this was only published and printed in 1877. The first Afrikaans grammars and dictionaries were published in 1875 by the Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaners ("Society for Real Afrikaners") in Cape Town.

The Boer Wars further strengthened the position of the new Dutch-like language. The official languages of the Union of South Africa were English and Dutch until Afrikaans was subsumed under Dutch on 5 May 1925.

Difference between Dutch and Afrikaans
Besides vocabulary, the most striking difference between Dutch and Afrikaans is its much more regular grammar, which is likely the result of extensive contact with one or more creole languages based on the Dutch language spoken by the relatively large number of non-Dutch speakers (Khoikhoi, German, French, Cape Malay, and speakers of different African languages) during the formation period of the language in the second half of the 17th century. In 1710, slaves outnumbered free settlers, and the language was developing among speakers who had little occasion to write or analyse their new dialect.

There are many different theories about how Afrikaans came to be. The Afrikaans School has long seen Afrikaans as a natural development from the South-Hollandic Dutch dialect, but has also only considered the Afrikaans as spoken by the Whites. The Afrikaans School has also rejected all alternative ideas.

Most linguistics scholars today are certain that Afrikaans has been influenced by creole languages based on the South-Holland Dutch dialect. It is very hard to find out how this influence took place, since there is almost no material written in the Dutch-based creole languages: only a few sentences found in unrelated books often written by non-speakers.

Although much of the vocabulary of Afrikaans reflects its origins in 17th century South-Hollandic Dutch, it also contains words borrowed from Asian Malay (one of the oldest known Afrikaans texts used Arabic script; see Arabic Afrikaans), Malagasy, Portuguese, French, Khoi and San dialects, English, Xhosa and many other languages. Consequently, many words in Afrikaans are very different from Dutch, as demonstrated by the names of different fruits:

Afrikaans Dutch English
piesang* banaan banana
pynappel ananas pineapple
lemoen sinaasappel orange
suurlemoen** citroen lemon

* from Malay pisang (via Dutch East Indies history), Piesang is also used in The Netherlands and Indonesia. ** suur = sour (which is essentially the same as the Dutch word 'zuur'). Lemoen or limoen is also used in standard Dutch.