The Afrikaans language arose in the Dutch Cape Colony, through a gradual divergence from European Dutch dialects, during the course of the 18th century. It was previously referred to as 'Cape Dutch' ( Kaap-Hollands/ 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'. The name of the language comes directly from the Dutch word Afrikaansch (now spelled Afrikaans) meaning 'African'. It is the majority language of the western half of South Africa-the provinces of the Northern Cape and Western Cape-and the first language of 75.8% of Coloured South Africans (4.8 million people), 60.8% of White South Africans (2.7 million people), 1.5% of Black South Africans (600,000 people), and 4.6% of Indian South Africans (58,000 people). It has the widest geographic and racial distribution of the 11 official languages and is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language, although Zulu and English are estimated to be understood as a second language by a much larger proportion of the population. Ībout 13.5% of the South African population (7 million people) speak Afrikaans as a first language, making it the third most common natively-spoken language in the country, after Zulu and Xhosa. There is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, especially in written form. Differences with Dutch include a more analytic-type morphology and grammar, and some pronunciations. Obelisks of the Afrikaans Language Monument near PaarlĪn estimated 90 to 95% of the vocabulary is of Dutch origin, with adopted words from other languages including German and the Khoisan languages of Southern Africa.

Creole translator