Is Afrikaans or Dutch easier to learn?

Afrikaans is easier than Dutch because it’s grammar simplified. Dutch is more complicated. Once you can speak and write Dutch you will be able to read Afrikaans newspapers and will be able to have a conversation with an Afrikaans person if you speak slow.

Why is Afrikaans so easy?

Afrikaans is full of cognate words with English as it comes from the same low Germanic roots as English does. All in all, English speakers are likely to find Afrikaans easier to learn than most other tongues.

Is Afrikaans the easiest language for English speakers?

Afrikaans is one of the easiest languages for English speakers because both Afrikaans and English belong to the West Germanic language family. Afrikaans language is not inflective, i.e. even with little vocabulary, you can build up your own sentences.

Is English harder than Afrikaans?

On top of that, Afrikaans is a phonetic language with rarely an exception to be found, which means that From an objective, linguistic perspective, English would be the most difficult because of its lengthy history, many forms, grammatical variations, wealth of exceptions and many influences from other languages.

How hard is it for an English speaker to learn Afrikaans?

Afrikaans is not hard to learn. In fact, Afrikaans can be quite fun to learn, and it’s relatively easy if you speak English or another Germanic language, as you’ll already be familiar with much of the vocabulary. The grammar is very simple and straightforward, and the pronunciation is not complex.

Is Dutch an easy language to learn?

How hard is it to learn? Dutch is probably the easiest language to learn for English speakers as it positions itself somewhere between German and English. However, de and het are quite possibly the hardest part to learn, as you have to memorise which article each noun takes.

Is Afrikaans easier to learn than Dutch?

While it still looks and sounds a lot like Dutch, Afrikaans is a lot easier to simply pick up and use, mainly for the following reasons: Grammatical gender has disappeared. Verb conjugation is almost nonexistent and irregularities are few. Spelling has been simplified and is more intuitive for an English speaker.

What languages does Afrikaans borrow from other languages?

Although Afrikaans borrows some lexical and syntactical structures from other languages, including Malay, Portuguese, Khoisan languages, Bantu languages, and to a lesser extent Low German, Dutch speakers are confronted with fewer non- cognates when listening to Afrikaans than the other way round.

What is the difference between Afrika and Afrikaans?

Names of languages and countries. Unlike in Dutch, in Afrikaans, the word Afrikaans is not used to mean “African” in general; instead the prefix Afrika- is used, hence whereas African languages would be referred to in Dutch as Afrikaanse talen, in Afrikaans, they would be called Afrikatale.

How many people speak Afrikaans?

Now on to Afrikaans. Afrikaans is actually the fourth-most spoken Germanic language after English, German, and Dutch, with an estimated 20 million speakers including second language speakers.