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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".
Worldwide, Afrikaans and Dutch as native or second language are spoken by approximately 46 million people. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] particularly in written form.
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, ... Modern Languages of Africa.
At least thirty-five languages are spoken in South Africa, twelve of which are official languages of South Africa: Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, South African Sign Language, Swazi, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu, and English, which is the primary language used in parliamentary and state discourse, though all official languages are equal in legal status.
Geographical distribution of Afrikaans in Namibia. South African census figures suggest a growing number of first language Afrikaans speakers in all nine provinces, a total of 6.85 million in 2011 compared to 5.98 million a decade earlier. [1] 2001 Namibian census reported that 11.4% of Namibians had Afrikaans (Namibian Afrikaans) as their home ...
An Afrikaans-language school, Bothashof, was established in 1911 in Bulawayo. An Afrikaner organisation, the Afrikaans Cultural Union of Rhodesia (AKUR), was established in 1934, and sought to preserve Afrikaner culture in Rhodesia, particularly through creating an Afrikaans press and by promoting the Afrikaans language in schools. [ 30 ]
A Haiǁom language is listed in most Khoisan references. A century ago the Haiǁom people spoke a Ju dialect, probably close to ǃKung, but they now speak a divergent dialect of Nama. Thus their language is variously said to be extinct or to have 18,000 speakers, to be Ju or to be Khoe. (Their numbers have been included under Nama above.)