South Africa has eleven official languages and the third most spoken language in the country is Afrikaans. There are approximately 6 million people whose mother tongue is Afrikaans, about 13% of the South African population.
Afrikaans is the youngest member of the Germanic group of languages, originating from the 17th century Dutch dialects and in little more than 100 years developed into a separate language. This comparatively short evolution of a language has aroused a lot of interest among philologists. It is, however, obviously and predominantly the daughter language of various Dutch dialects and was originally known as Cape Dutch. The language also had strong German and French influences as well as many other languages that the settlers came into contact with.
Of all the spoken languages in South Africa, Afrikaans has possibly the widest distribution as it is also extensively spoken and understood as a second or even third language by a large percentage of the population. In the provinces of both the Northern and Western Cape it is the primary language of the majority of coloured and white communities.
The Afrikaans Language museum, which illustrates the development of the language, is situated in the town of Paarl in the Western Cape Province. The museum itself is housed in the Gideon Malherbe house where the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (Association of True Afrikaners) was founded in 1875 and where in 1876 the first Afrikaans newspaper was published. Also situated on a hill overlooking the town of Paarl is the magnificent monument to the Afrikaans language. There is also an Afrikaans monumentin Burgersdorp in the Eastern Cape.
Photo: Paarl Vintners
In 11% of households in neighbouring Namibia the home language is Afrikaans and it is also a second language for many members of the Namibian population. Afrikaans is also spoken in other African countries such as Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland and has also spread around the western world where it is spoken by the emigrant and expatriate communities.
It is estimated but not officially recorded that there are up to around 20 million Afrikaans speakers worldwide.
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