[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)