Afrikaans Translations

POZENA’s professional Afrikaans translations

• Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, which is a branch of the Germanic languages family. Its history dates back to the 17th century, when it began to develop from the southern Dutch dialects spoken in the Cape Colony in southern Africa. The Afrikaans language was also heavily influenced by other languages, primarily Portuguese, Malay, Khoisan and Bantu languages (in the latter period, also by English). Until the early 20th century, Afrikaans was regarded as a dialect of Dutch. In 1925, a parliamentary act made it one of the official languages of South Africa.
• Afrikaans and Dutch are considered to be mutually intelligible languages. Despite lexical influences from other languages, more than 90% of Afrikaans vocabulary is derived from Dutch. There are three major dialectal varieties: Cape Afrikaans (Kaapse Afrikaans), Afrikaans of the Orange River (Oranjerivier-Afrikaans), and Eastern Cape Afrikaans (Oosgrens-Afrikaans). Another dialect that deserves mention is Oorlans, which has a number of unique features that are said to have originated from the Bantu languages. By some researchers, Oorlans is considered to be an Afrikaans-based creole.
• Afrikaans is regulated by Die Taalkommissie (the Language Commission), which is part of the South African Academy for Science and Arts.

• Verb forms in Afrikaans are less complex than in Dutch: they are not conjugated for person or number. The equivalent of the English verb be (wees) has the same form (is) regardless of the sentence subject.
• What also distinguishes Afrikaans from the remaining Germanic languages is the presence of double negatives in sentences.
• An interesting function word in Afrikaans is the indefinite article 'n, which is the equivalent of the Dutch een. The article remains lower case even if occurs at the beginning of sentence.
• Probably the best known Afrikaans borrowing which occurs in a number of modern languages is apartheid. In the English lexicon there are at least two other common borrowings: trek and aardvark.
• In South Africa there are two monuments that commemorate the Afrikaans language. Unveiled in 1975 to commemorate the semicentenary of Afrikaans being recognized as an official language), the Afrikaans Language Monument symbolizes the influences of foreign cultures and languages on Afrikaans.