Comparing Afrikaans and Dutch (Langfocus)

“Afrikaans developed from the Dutch spoken by settlers who arrived at the Cape of Good Hope in the 17th century.”

“It was influenced by languages like Khoekhoe, Malay, and Portuguese, which were spoken by enslaved and indigenous people at the Cape.”

“Afrikaans got rid of grammatical gender, so you don't have to worry about whether a noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter like in Dutch.”

“In Afrikaans, the verb stays the same no matter who the subject is, while in Dutch you still conjugate the verb for different persons.”

“Afrikaans uses a double negative construction with nie...nie at the end of the clause, something you don't find in standard Dutch.”

“Afrikaans spelling tends to be more phonetic, reflecting pronunciation more closely than the more conservative Dutch orthography.”

“For example, Afrikaans uses baie to mean 'very' or 'many', which comes from Malay, while Dutch uses veel or heel.”

“The intelligibility is actually asymmetrical: Dutch speakers tend to understand written Afrikaans more easily than Afrikaans speakers understand spoken Dutch.”

“When you read Afrikaans, the simplified spelling still shows the Dutch cognates clearly, so a Dutch speaker can usually figure out the meaning.”