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Afrikaans at a glance. Native name: Afrikaans ɐfriˈkɑːns. Linguistic affliation: Indo-European, Germanic, West Germanic, Low Franconian, Dutch. Number of speakers: c.15-23 million. Spoken in: South Africa and Namibia.

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First written: 19th century. Writing system: Arabic and Latin alphabets. Status: official language in South Africa and Namibia Afrikaans retains some features of 18th century Dutch, together with vocabulary from various Bantu and Khoisan languages and also from Portugese and Malay.

Speakers of Afrikaans can understand Dutch, though Dutch speakers tend to need a while to tune into Afrikaans. From about 1815 Afrikaans started to replace Malay as the language of instruction in Muslim schools in South Africa. At that time it was written with the.

Afrikaans, written with the Latin alphabet, started to appeared in newspapers and political and religious works in about 1850. Then in 1875 a group of Afrikaans speakers from the Cape formed the Genootskap vir Regte Afrikaanders (Society for Real Afrikaners), and published a number of books in Afrikaans, including grammars, dictionaries, religious material and histories. They also published a journal called the Patriot. During the early years of the 20th century there was a blossoming of academic interest in Afrikaans. In 1925 Afrikaans was recognised by the government as a real language, instead of a slang version of Dutch. Afrikaans has changed little since then.

Afrikaans alphabet.