Afrikaans - the youngest language

My study book

 

I have a nice acquaintance, Marcel Bas. He studied linguistics in Leiden and his passion is Afrikaans, he even started his own website " De Roepstem".  Before my exchange he explained a few things about this language and it was very interesting. I was happy that In Herschel I could follow Afrikaans language lessons.

It is a daughter language of Dutch, but anyway different.  Afrikaans also known as the Cape Dutch and it belongs to the West Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is spoken by 5 million people as a first language and by 10 million as a second language in South Africa. It is also spoken in Botswana , Lesotho, Namibia and Zambia.The name "Afrikaans" means African in Dutch. It was originally used by the Dutch settlers.  This language was considered a Dutch dialect until the beginning of 20th century. In 1925 was officially recognized to be a distinct language from Dutch. It has a rich vowel system with short and long vowels . The basic vocabulary of Afrikaans is Dutch in origin, but you can recognize the English and German effects. There are some Afrikaan words which sound very funny for us. When somebody looks a little bit gray in his face and says "Ik ben aardig", he doesn't want to express he is kind, but that he feels sick.  You could react by saying that he has to take a "blaaskans", which means he has to take some time to recover. You can travel in Africa by "Duimgooien", which means hitchhiking. But you also can hire your own "motorkar", but be careful for a "papwiel", which is a flat tire.     

It is quite interesting that " Afrikaans Language Monument" is built on a hill in Paarl, Western Cape Province. The structure is impressive and this is the only language monument in the world.   It shows  all languages that influenced Afrikaans. It is a great symbolism of growth and development of the Afrikaans language. People are very proud of it.

 

Afrikaans Language Monument