[NicoJuicy]

Since we also talk about languages here. I once found a post in African ( Afrikaans), I thought it was strangely written Dutch, then saw the tld and looked it up.

Then learned that Afrikaans is based on Dutch. It's really funny that you can read the main language of a country so far away, since Dutch isn't that spoken by that many people ( 28 million)

[buyx]

Afrikaans isn't the "main language" of South Africa. It is 1 of 11 official languages, 9 of which are Bantu languages.

Until 1994, it was one of two official languages (along with English). I've also never seen it referred to by the name "African". One of the main causes of the 16 June 1976 Soweto riots was an attempt by the apartheid government to change the medium of instruction in black schools from English to Afrikaans. Although it has never been the first language of the vast majority of black Africans, it is the first language of a large percentage of whites, and mixed-race people (the Coloureds), and especially in rural areas, was a popular second language, however it seems to have been displaced as a second language by English, and most Afrikaans universities and many Afrikaans-medium schools now also offer instruction in English.

That said, I learned it at school, and it was fairly straightforward to pick up as a native English speaker.

[zamalek]

> Afrikaans isn't the "main language" of South Africa.

@NicoJuicy might have meant to say "common tongue." I can only communicate effectively English and the pervasiveness of Afrikaans still gives me problems - even though it is currently being displaced as the common tongue.

[_0ffh]

IIRC "Afrikaans" literally means "African" (in Dutch and, uhm, Afrikaans).

[caio1982]

It does, but it may sound derogatory because African has a much wider and broad meaning than a specific Dutch word (used in a singular colonized area).

[wavefunction]

And in any case, it's Afrikaans in English as well as Dutch, so 'African' while perhaps a literal translation into English is not really something with meaning in English.

[daniel-levin]

Nobody here calls Afrikaans anything other than Afrikaans. Certainly not 'African'. Furthermore, South Africa is a predominantly anglophone country, with 11 official languages. Afrikaans isn't even one of the top 2 mother tongues. I'm an English speaking white South African who learned Afrikaans at school. I can understand the language. I almost always default to speaking English with Afrikaans speakers. Continued use of Afrikaans is a contentious issue in South African university politics. To grotesquely oversimplify, it is perceived as the language of the oppressor, and a means of control and exclusion. See [1].

_Interestingly_, however, Paul Le Roux [0] resented having to learn Afrikaans, seeing it as a dated, dead language.

[0] https://magazine.atavist.com/he-always-had-a-dark-side

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF3rTBQTQk4

[executesorder66]

> South Africa is a predominantly anglophone country, with 11 official languages. Afrikaans isn't even one of the top 2 mother tongues.

Yes but it's 3rd after Zulu and Xhosa.

And I find it amusing that you say that SA is a predominantly anglophone country, when more people speak Afrikaans in South Africa than English. [0]

    +-----------+-------------+-------------+------------+
    | Language  | L1 speakers | L2 speakers | Total      |
    +-----------+-------------+-------------+------------+
    | Afrikaans | 7,218,390   | 10,300,000  | 17,518,390 |
    +-----------+-------------+-------------+------------+
    | English   | 4,890,000   | 11,000,000  | 15,890,000 |
    +-----------+-------------+-------------+------------+

[0] https://www.ethnologue.com/country/ZA/languages (this link has links to more references)