Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language spoken mainly in South Africa and Namibia, with smaller communities in Botswana and among diaspora groups. It developed from Dutch spoken by settlers at the Cape in the 17th century and gradually diverged into a distinct language. Contact with Malay, Portuguese, Khoisan, and Bantu languages, as well as Dutch-speaking communities, contributed loanwords and grammatical shifts that shaped Afrikaans.

Today Afrikaans is one of the official languages of South Africa and is used in education, government, media, and everyday life, particularly in the Western and Northern Cape and surrounding areas. It is mutually intelligible to varying degrees with Dutch and has its own literary and cultural traditions.

Linguistic features: Afrikaans is analytic, with relatively little inflection; it has no grammatical gender and a relatively simple verb system that relies on auxiliary verbs to express tenses. Pronouns include jy for informal you and u for formal you, with julle for you plural. The vocabulary blends Dutch roots with loanwords from Malay, Portuguese, and indigenous languages. Dialects include Cape Afrikaans (Kaaps), Central Afrikaans, and Northern Cape varieties; the standard form is largely based on the Cape Dutch base.

Writing system and usage: It uses the Latin alphabet with standard spelling. Afrikaans has a rich literary tradition and is a major medium in South African media and education, with authors such as N. P. van Wyk Louw, Breyten Breytenbach, and Antjie Krog contributing to its canon.