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Intelligibility, Afrikaans & Dutch? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Talairan Tetraglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6593 days ago 194 posts - 258 votes  Speaks: Afrikaans, English*, Gypsy/Romani, Dutch Studies: Spanish, Flemish, Galician, Aramaic | Message 17 of 36 24 November 2010 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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EmmiInEurope: Welkom by HTLAL en baie dankie vir jou website:)
I had the same experience as you the first time I went to Belgium. I found that by altering the way I was speaking Afrikaans I could make myself better understood, particularly when it came to pronunciation of the vowels. It took a while for me to realise that I should be using "heel" instead of "baie" which is unintelligble there ;) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5353 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 18 of 36 27 November 2010 at 5:26am | IP Logged | |||||
When I was studying in Germany, I had a friend at the university from South Africa. She wrote me out a few Afrikaans phrases of my choosing for when I went to the Netherlands to visit a Dutch girl who I was friends with and wanted to impress. Unfortunately, one of the phrases was "Jy is baie mooi" or something like that, and the girl didn't understand what I meant, so that idea did not work as well as planned. I've been studying Dutch on and off, haphazardly, for the past year. To read Afrikaans is no problem for me, as it is almost as if I am reading Dutch. The first time I stumbled upon written Afrikaans, in fact, I thought it was Dutch... The spoken language, I imagine it would be a bit more difficult. There are deviations in words, due to African-language influences on Afrikaans, for example. Some of my Dutch friends always told me that they felt Afrikaans just sounded like "sloppy Dutch" to them, since the grammar is so much simplified. As a few others have mentioned, I think that there is a very high degree of mutual inteligability, but that one would just have to train his or her ear a bit to really take advantage of this. As for learning the one language and then the other, this is something that I would not recommend doing. Although there are differences between the two languages, so much is the same. I think it would be very hard to ever speak both in a pure form, since one would rely on the one to fill in the gaps and speak the other. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 19 of 36 27 November 2010 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When I was preparing my recent not-really-Afrikaans-but-something-in-that-direction video I listened to several podcasts from Radio sonder Grense in a row, and I noticed one important difference between Dutch and Afrikaans: Dutch has diphtongs that go downwards (ei, uy, ou..) plus long 'flat' vowels (ooo, eee..). The latter become diphtongs that go upwards in Afrikaans: ooo--> uor, eee--> ieer and so forth. Edited by Iversen on 27 November 2010 at 6:41pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Malivar Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5375 days ago 5 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English, Afrikaans*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Russian | Message 20 of 36 28 November 2010 at 6:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm from South Africa, my native language being Afrikaans, and I have to say that the written Dutch isn't particularly
hard for me to figure out. The spoken language is quite different, though. I understand parts of songs and things like that, but not to the degree that I could speak with that person intellectually and fully be able to understand them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| CheeseInsider Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5123 days ago 193 posts - 238 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* Studies: French, German | Message 21 of 36 28 November 2010 at 5:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
I saw your Afrikaans video :D And subscribed of course haha. It was interesting to hear what Afrikaans sounds like.
I see you're studying Dutch :) Do you have an idea of how long it will take for you to learn Dutch? Are you trying to modify your Afrikaans and turn it into Dutch? Or are you learning Dutch separately with you speaking both Afrikaans and Dutch as the end result? Edited by CheeseInsider on 28 November 2010 at 5:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 22 of 36 29 November 2010 at 1:24am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm fairly sure my Afrikaans didn't sound authentic - after all I have only heard some fragments while travelling, a few short Youtube clips in January this year and less then 10 hours during the last month or so. It would be rather surprising if that was enough background. I have slightly more training in writing Afrikaans, but even there I would only charactherize myself as an intermediate in the lower bracket. But these videos give my studies a concrete direction, given that I otherwise tend to rely too much on the written language. And I have learnt from Afrikaans that internet TV isn't necessary - radio and podcasts just with sound are also OK, if the themes are interesting and the sound quality is OK. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| EmmiInEurope Tetraglot Newbie South Africa nederlandsvirafrikaa Joined 5116 days ago 13 posts - 26 votes Speaks: Afrikaans*, English, French, Dutch Studies: Spanish | Message 23 of 36 29 November 2010 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
Interesting observation - and very true. Also in Afrikaans our short vowels tend to be rounded - i.e. a is almost pronounced 'รด', where in Dutch they are open and flat. This, and the difference in intonation as you mentioned above, are probably the biggest differences. I might add that the rounded vowels, and upward diphtongs, are phenomena that are fairly recent and much more common in the northern part of the country (Johannesburg, Pretoria) under younger people. The older generation often mocks younger people for speaking in this way. In contrast to this, the Cape Couloured accent is very flat.
I think it depends on what level of fluency you would like to reach. Because 80-90% of the vocabulary coincides, comprehension can be carried over from one to the other very easily. Thus if you only want to be able to read or understand Dutch, sure, Afrikaans is a good entry point. But speaking or writing correctly is another story: differences in grammatical constructions and the 'flow' of the language, the syntax, makes it tough to transfer. Once again, making yourself understood is not difficult, but speaking it correctly is another story. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5321 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 24 of 36 29 November 2010 at 4:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This might be a bit off-topic, but I thought that this was the best thread to ask my question.
At the beginning of a recent episode of House, MD (7x7 - "A Pox on Our House") there was flash-back scene in an old slave ship were the crew was supposedly speaking Dutch. I really had a hard time understanding anything and chalked it up to my admittedly very rusty Dutch. Later I did some research and found out that the actor who played the Dutch captain was from South Africa and most likely spoke Afrikaans and not Dutch. Can someone who speaks Afrikaans and/or Dutch and has seen this particular episode confirm this? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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