Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa andNamibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch (a term also used to refer collectively to theearly Dutch settlers).^{[n 2]} Although Afrikaans adopted words from languages such asMalay, Portuguese, the Bantu languages, and the Khoisan languages, an estimated 90 to 95 percent of Afrikaans vocabulary is ultimately of Dutch origin.^{[n 3]} Therefore,differences with Dutch often lie in a more regular morphology, grammar, and spelling of Afrikaans.^{[n 4]} There is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages—especially in written form—although it is easier for Dutch-speakers to understand Afrikaans than the other way around.^{[n 5]}

With about 6 million native speakers in South Africa, or 13.3 percent of the population, it is the third most spoken mother tongue in the country.^[2][3] It has the widest geographical and racial distribution of all the official languages of South Africa, and is widely spoken and understood as a second or third language.^{[n 6]} It is the majority language of the western half of South Africa—the provinces of theNorthern Cape and Western Cape—and the primary language of the coloured andwhite communities.^{[n 7]} In neighbouring Namibia, Afrikaans is widely spoken as a second language and used as lingua franca,^{[n 8]} while as a native language it is spoken in 11 percent of households, mainly concentrated in the capital Windhoekand the southern regions of Hardap and Karas.^{[n 9]} Estimates of the total number of Afrikaans-speakers range between 15 and 23 million.^{[n 1]}