I Have a Challenge!

[toinet]

Hi Jeremy-From-USA,

English is the main language in Cape Town.

toinet
Rotterdam, Holland

[Ra]

Jeremy-From-USA

I feel a bit insulted by your comment "which is really just badly spelled English mixed with Dutch" of earlier. I am a South African with Afrikaans as my mother tongue. Afrikaans is in no way directly related to English. Dutch and Afrikaans are sister languages and therefore they will exhibit similarities! Just as your "badly spelled English" comment of earlier can be explained by linguistics: English, German, Dutch and Afrikaans have a common ancestor, namely West Germanic. If there weren't any similarities, then they would not have been classified as being related to this ancestor! You will certainly not be able to understand Afrikaans if you have never encountered either Dutch or Flemish, and even then you will have immense difficulty in understanding speakers of Afrikaans who speak fluently and rapidly. The pronunciation of Dutch and Afrikaans differs to such an extent that native Dutch speakers cannot readily understand Afrikaans, and native Afrikaans speakers cannot readily understand Dutch that well.

Afrikaans is the commonest language in Cape Town, although all South Africans are at least bilingual (speaking English and Afrikaans).

I am sorry if this message sounds condescending or blunt, but I feel the need to defend my language against such uninformed ridicule! Please do get your facts straight before you make such comments. If your are still not convinced, I shall give you some examples of Dutch, English and Afrikaans to demonstrate the similarities and the differences, if need be. Just say if I should do so and I will be glad to.

[brett_chapman]

Ra: Allow me to voice my agreement (Although I am a native English Speaker and have been learning Afrikaans for only one year). I should also point out that Afrikaans is the majority language of both the Northern Cape and Western Cape provinces, which is far cooler than just Kaapstad :-)

Jeremy: Allow me to provide a breakdown..

West Germanic can be subdivided into 'Netherlandic-German' which contains German, Dutch, Bavarian German, Yiddish, Afrikaans etc, and 'Anglo-Frisian' which is where English and Frisian come in. They are related, but, as 'Stigting Vir Afrikaans' (http://www.afrikaans.com) put it, it'd be better to say that Afrikaans and Dutch are both descendants of Medieval Dutch than to say that Afrikaans is 'simplified Dutch'.

[Springbucksa]

Afrikaans is also my mother tongue, my favourite *rough words* are Bliksim, Blikskottel and Donder (all of them mean Thunder) I got a laugh out of the Jy praat k@k and the Jou ma se...They are not really SWEAR words, merely rough words. But still noy very tasteful.