Afrikaans Alphabet

The Afrikaans alphabet has 26 base letters ^[2] — the same as the standard Latin alphabet used in English.

However, Afrikaans also uses 8 additional diacritical letter forms (â, ê, î, ô, û, ë, ï, è), making 34 distinct letter forms in total when you count accented vowels used in native Afrikaans words.

According to the 2022 Census of South Africa, approximately 7.2 million people speak Afrikaans as their home language ^[1], making it the third most spoken home language after Zulu and Xhosa.

Additional millions speak it as a second language across southern Africa, especially in Namibia.

Afrikaans is one of 11 official languages of the Republic of South Africa ^[3]. It is also an official language of Namibia.

The Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB), established under the PanSALB Act of 1995, promotes and develops all 11 official languages including Afrikaans.

Yes — Afrikaans descended directly from 17th-century Dutch ^[2] brought to the Cape of Good Hope by VOC settlers. Over three centuries, grammatical gender was lost, verb conjugation was simplified, and vocabulary was enriched by Malay, Portuguese, and Bantu languages.

Dutch speakers can often understand written Afrikaans, but spoken Afrikaans sounds quite different from modern Dutch.

Afrikaans has unusually simple grammar for a Germanic language:

• No grammatical gender — all nouns use "die" (the) or "'n" (a/an)

• No case endings — nouns do not change form based on grammatical role

• Double negation — sentences often end with a second "nie" (not): "Ek kan nie" … "nie"

These features make Afrikaans one of the easiest Germanic languages to learn for English speakers.

Afrikaans uses two types of diacritical marks ^[3]:

• Circumflex (^) over vowels — â, ê, î, ô, û — marks long or open vowel sounds

• Diaeresis (¨) over vowels — ë, ï, è — indicates that two adjacent vowels are pronounced separately, not as a diphthong

For example, "reën" (rain) uses ë to show the e and the ë are two separate syllables.

While its grammar and core vocabulary come from Dutch, Afrikaans vocabulary was shaped by several contact languages:

• Cape Malay — brought words like baie (many/very) and food terms

• Khoikhoi and San languages — contributed words for local flora and fauna

• Bantu languages (Zulu, Xhosa) — influenced everyday vocabulary

• English — many modern loanwords in technology and commerce

Afrikaans spelling is largely phonemic — words are generally spelled the way they sound. The Afrikaanse Woordelys en Spelreëls (AWS), published by the Taalkommissie, is the official spelling standard.

Key spelling rules include:

• Double vowels indicate long sounds: boom (tree), seun (son)

• The digraph "tj" represents /tʃ/ as in English "church"

• The letter "g" is pronounced like the guttural /x/ in the Dutch word "goed"

Afrikaans developed as a written language relatively recently. While it was spoken at the Cape from the 18th century onwards, it was officially standardised in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Key milestones include:

• 1875 — the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (Society of True Afrikaners) began promoting Afrikaans as a written language

• 1925 — Afrikaans officially replaced Dutch as a co-official language of South Africa alongside English

• 1933 — the first complete Afrikaans Bible was published, cementing its literary status