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Africaans = dialect of Dutch? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| paparaciii Diglot Senior Member Latvia Joined 6336 days ago 204 posts - 223 votes  Speaks: Latvian*, Russian Studies: English | Message 1 of 7 05 January 2010 at 3:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Native Dutch and Africaans speakers please answer this question:
Are these two languages really one language? When this Belgian journalist was interviewing Charlize Theron, she spoke Africaans(she is originally from South Africa) and he spoke Belgian Dutch and they understood each other just fine... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fYB9s0Nyzk 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JW Hexaglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/egw Joined 6122 days ago 1802 posts - 2011 votes 22 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Ancient Greek, French, Biblical Hebrew Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch, Greek, Italian | Message 2 of 7 05 January 2010 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not a native but they are indeed mutually comprehensible. I haven't had the opportunity of speaking Dutch with an Afrikaans speaker but I can easily exchange written messages with virtually no trouble understanding. We have done this in the Multilingual lounge in various threads.
My own analogy is that it is somewhat analogous to a white educated American speaking with a black urban inner city American, i.e., Afrikaans sounds and looks strange but it is understandable. Whether or not you consider them to be the same or different languages is a matter of definition. The argument that Belgian Dutch (Vlaams) is a different language than the Dutch spoken in the Netherlands (Nederlands) can also be made (and I know Grytolle will defend this position)... Edited by JW on 05 January 2010 at 4:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6386 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 3 of 7 05 January 2010 at 6:33am | IP Logged | ||
Basically, yes. It's easier to understand Africaans than to understand some 'mainland' Dutch and Flemish dialects. They didn't even use subtitles on Flemish TV which they typically do every time someone speaks a dialect. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 7 05 January 2010 at 9:51am | IP Logged | ||
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In my (non-native) opinion they are languages, but quite close companions. Both are official languages, both are taught with independent standards, and even though there are dialects of Dutch within the Benelux area that seem to be even more distant from Standard Dutch Afrikaans has its totally own profile on the grammatical side - being one of the most anti-morphological languages I have ever seen. But the dividing line between languages and dialects is a problem, being half linguistic, half political.
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| elvisrules Tetraglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5469 days ago 286 posts - 390 votes Speaks: French, English*, Dutch, Flemish Studies: Lowland Scots, Japanese, German | Message 5 of 7 05 January 2010 at 3:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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What does anti-morphological mean?
It's true that Afrikaans is highly mutually intelligible with Dutch, and that some Dutch and Flemish "dialects" such as West Flemish differ much more grammatically and vocabulary-wise, but as Iversen says, dividing languages and dialects is not just a linguistic issue, but a political one too. I would actually go as far to say that it is more political than linguistic.
I certainly agree with Grytolle on this one. But please don't confuse the official Standard Belgian Dutch (Algemeen Belgisch Nederlands) with the unofficial Flemish (Vlaamse tussentaal). The latter is not a dialect but a mixture grammar and vocabulary from the Flemish dialects and French, with a pronunciation similar to that of Standard Belgian Dutch (based on the Holland dialect of the Netherlands). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nimchimpsky Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5611 days ago 73 posts - 108 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English | Message 6 of 7 08 January 2010 at 9:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me it's no problem to understand Afrikaans. To me Afrikaans is a kind of Dutch with no inflection.
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| Ncruz Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5538 days ago 31 posts - 56 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Dutch, Portuguese, Afrikaans Studies: French, German, Italian, Russian, Norwegian, Japanese, Scottish Gaelic | Message 7 of 7 14 January 2010 at 8:17am | IP Logged | ||
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I found a very interesting map that shows how close Dutch and Afrikaans dialects are to Standard Dutch. I don't now how accurate it is, but it is nonetheless fascinating. Interestingly, it shows that Afrikaans as spoken in the West Cape is closer to standard Dutch than many European dialects of Dutch. It ranks the dialects of Dutch/Afrikaans as a number with 1 being standard Dutch. The higher the number, the further it is from standard. Here is the map.
I have asked my cousins back in South Africa what they think of the matter and they seem to feel that Afrikaans is linguistically more like a dialect of Dutch, but because of the different histories of Afrikaans and Dutch and the outside influences on Afrikaans it qualifies as a different language than Dutch. I think that it is also a matter of prestige and pride. If Dutch and Afrikaans were considered the same language, South Africans would be mocked for their failure to conjugate verbs and simplistic grammar, and be looked down upon as speakers of very poor Dutch. However, since Afrikaans is a language in its own right, the peculiarities that evolved in Africa are now considered standard and not mocked as uneducated, but rather praised as an expression of Afrikaner culture. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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