Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

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What should I learn?

Poll ended at Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:03 pm

Dutch
9
26%
Afrikaans
10
29%
Neither
12
34%
Unsure
4
11%
 
Total votes: 35

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księżycowy
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby księżycowy » Sun Jul 10, 2022 5:31 pm

Deinonysus wrote:Ndebele does seem tough to find resources for. If I were in your shoes I would study Zulu and then hope to pick up some Ndebele by osmosis since they're so closely related. There are some really good resources out there for Zulu, including a bunch of of teachers on iTalki. But there is one Ndebele teacher on iTalki as well!

This is a pretty good spot to check and see if there are any textbooks for any given African language. And as it happens, there's an Ndebele textbook with audio. :)
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Le Baron
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jul 10, 2022 8:26 pm

The other week, by chance, I found the audio to those old pinkish-coloured Linguaphone Afrikaans books. I remember someone posted the books somewhere.
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby Iversen » Thu Jul 14, 2022 4:37 pm

I have studied both, and I'm sure about it. How do I mark that?
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby Deinonysus » Thu Jul 14, 2022 5:11 pm

Iversen wrote:I have studied both, and I'm sure about it. How do I mark that?

Well, the question was which of the two I should study, not which of the two the responder should study or has studied. But the thread was from a year ago so I've edited the post to close the polling.

Predictably, I ended up getting distracted and moving on without studying much of either language.
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby Le Baron » Thu Jul 14, 2022 5:47 pm

Still I'm appalled that Afrikaans got a higher score. Not because I dislike it, but because Dutch people (and speakers) can usually get by very well listening to Afrikaans, where as the reverse is more commonly not the case. On that point alone I think it's better to learn Dutch first.
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby Iversen » Thu Jul 14, 2022 7:07 pm

If the question is which one you should study first, then I would definitely go for Dutch. It is spoken by more people than Afrikaans (25 mio in the Netherlands, Vlanderen, Suriname and a couple of places more), and it's the dominating language there which means that you have a much wider range of native materials to choose from. In South Africa (and to some degree Namibia) there are lots of Afrikaans speakers (allegedly 7 mio+), but because everyone in those countries automatically speaks English to foreigners you may have some trouble finding them. OK, in the Netherlands people also assume that foreigners only know English or French or German, but people who live there generally do speak Dutch, and you just have to find ways to lure them into using that language with you. On the other hand some people in ZA have bad vibes about Afrikaans because of apartheid, so you may have the same feeling trying out your Afrikaans as a person speaking Dutch in Namur or Liège (Dutch in Wallonia, well I have not dared try it... . and luckily I know I bit of French).

On a more practical level: I visited several bookstores i ZA during my latest visit, and there were lots of books and magazines in Afrikaans about nature and trekking and (not least) religion, but there is a much wider gamut of topics available for Anglophones - probably also more original fiction. In contrast every bookstore in the Netherlands or Vlanderen has materials about just about anything you can dream up (I'm not sure about Suriname - I have only been to one bookstore in Paramaribo, but I don't remember the proportions of books in different languages there).
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