Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia, and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and also Argentina, where a group in Sarmiento speaks a Patagonian dialect. It emerged during the late 19th century as a fusion of Dutch dialects (mainly Hollandic and Zeelandic) spoken by the Dutch settlers in South Africa since the 17th century and the Dutch-based creole languages spoken by the Khoisan, Nguni and Coloured peoples. Afrikaans is the third most spoken home language in South Africa, out of the country's 12 official languages. In 1996 it was spoken by 14.5% of the population, an estimated 5.9 million people. By 2022 that had fallen to 10.6% (6.3 million people), with Afrikaans gaining roughly 480,000 speakers overall. Although Afrikaans has adopted words from other languages, including German, Malay, and Khoisan languages, an estimated 90 to 95% of its vocabulary is of Dutch origin. Differences between Afrikaans and Dutch often lie in the more analytic morphology and grammar of Afrikaans, and different spellings. There is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, especially in written form.