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Afrikaans and/or Dutch are the official language of five sovereign countries, which lie in the Americas, Africa and Europe. These countries are referred to as the Nederlands taalgebied (Dutch language area). The Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname are member states of the Dutch Language Union; South Africa refuses to become a member state ...
The name of the language comes directly from the Dutch word Afrikaansch (now spelled Afrikaans) [n 4] meaning 'African'. [12] It was previously referred to as 'Cape Dutch' (Kaap-Hollands or Kaap-Nederlands), a term also used to refer to the early Cape settlers collectively, or the derogatory 'kitchen Dutch' (kombuistaal) from its use by slaves of colonial settlers "in the kitchen".
This is a list of lists of countries and territories by official language. List of countries and territories where Afrikaans or Dutch are official languages ...
A language that uniquely represents the national identity of a state, nation, and/or country and is so designated by a country's government; some are technically minority languages. (On this page a national language is followed by parentheses that identify it as a national language status.) Some countries have more than one language with this ...
Many countries, such as Belarus, Belgium, Canada, Finland, India, Ireland, South Africa and Switzerland, which are officially multilingual, may have many monolinguals in their population. Officially monolingual countries, on the other hand, such as France, can have sizable multilingual populations.
This is a list of countries by number of languages according to the 22nd edition of Ethnologue (2019). [ 1 ] Papua New Guinea has the largest number of languages in the world.
Afrikaans, a language primarily descended from Dutch, is the mother tongue of Afrikaners and most Cape Coloureds. [9] According to the South African National Census of 2022, 10.6% of South Africans claimed to speak Afrikaans as a first language at home, making it the third most widely spoken home language in the country. [10]
Overall 15 to 20 million people are estimated to speak Afrikaans. Since the colonial era, Indo-European languages such as Afrikaans, English, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish have held official status in many countries, and are widely spoken, generally as lingua francas. (See African French and African Portuguese.) Additionally ...