Are Dutch and Afrikaans really different?
Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch, since it developed from the Dutch spoken by colonists/immigrants in South Africa from the Netherlands. They’re actually very similar, and mostly mutually intelligible, though Afrikaans has some spelling differences, some different vocabulary (some borrowed from other languages spoken in the area, I believe) and an arguably ‘simpler’ grammar, including no grammatical gender and no verb conjugation for person - for example:
Ik ben - ek is (I am)Jij bent - jy is (you are)Hij is - hy is (he is)Wij zijn - ons is (we are)Jullie zijn - julle is (you (plural) are)Zij zijn - hulle is (they are)
Afrikaans also gets rid of some consonants from the middle of Dutch words, like Dutch regen (rain) becomes reën in Afrikaans… Oh also Afrikaans doesn’t use as many z’s or ch’s as Dutch, replacing them with s and g instead (zeven -> sewe (seven), acht -> agt (eight)).
But yeah someone who knows Dutch (like me) can quite happily listen to and understand much of an Afrikaans speaker, and vice versa. I actually once watched an interview of a South African actress done by a Belgian reporter, where the actress was speaking Afrikaans and the reporter was speaking Flemish (Belgian Dutch) and they understood each other perfectly, which was really cool! (Edit: found it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Q4ZMmw0bk)
(Thanks for the ask by the way, I don’t get enough on here!)
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