Languages can tell the story of a country, especially when its history is as varied as in South Africa. One of the country’s dominant but most controversial languages is Afrikaans, a variant of the Dutch language. It has grown from being a foreign tongue imposed on the local people to becoming an integral part of the speech and culture of the country, spreading far beyond its original culture and boundaries.

The Vocabulary and Spread of Afrikaans

According to Reinhold F. Hahns of the Lowlands website of Dutch culture and language , Afrikaans began to develop in the seventeenth century as a variant of Dutch and other Lowlands languages brought to Africa by European traders and settlers. Local languages such as the Bantu and Khoisan tongues contributed vocabulary, and eventually even English, French, Portuguese, and Malay left their marks.

Although most commonly associated with the ruling white population of South Africa’s apartheid days, Afrikaans is spoken by people of all races and is still widely used in South Africa and elsewhere. The Omniglot website even traces the use of the language to such African countries as Namibia and Lesotho and places as far away as Canada, Australia, and Belgium.

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