Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!

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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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:52 am

Dutch has more resources. Work hard on Dutch with the good and extensive resources and then when you make the leap to Afrikaans, the scant resources won't be an issue at all. It will also provide a good insight into the Afrikaans language that perhaps even some locals don't possess. A course book or two at most and (in theory) and you'll transition from B2+ Dutch to Afrikaans quite smoothly, especially with German knowledge. Plus, with Dutch at hand, you'll get the bonus of knowing another language which you indicate might likely be useful in Europe due to frequent travel to countries nearby. Dutch!
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby Saim » Fri Jun 04, 2021 4:59 am

I'd say Afrikaans or neither. Afrikaans is very close to English (and you also speak German!), you don't need that many beginner resources to get your foot in the door and start engaging seriously with authentic materials. And even then I wouldn't say it has "scant resources". You don't seem particularly interested in Dutch so I don't see what the point would be.
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby Le Baron » Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:16 pm

Saim wrote:Afrikaans is very close to English.


In what sense do you mean this? The vast majority of its vocabulary is derived directly from Dutch and its grammar resembles Dutch, most of it identically, though not every last element. Some vocab is from Bantu languages, some from English though that's not unusual.

Linguistically Frisian is much closer to English than Dutch is. Yet a Dutch person would instinctively recognise more in the content and structure of Frisian than an English person would at any first glance and even further glances. I say this because even with a more closely-related language there is more similarity for recognition purposes between Dutch-Frisian.

Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch specifically and very likely arising from a preponderance of eastern and southern dialects (including the top of modern Belgium).
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby Saim » Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:28 pm

Le Baron wrote:
Saim wrote:Afrikaans is very close to English.


In what sense do you mean this?


In terms of the world’s languages, or even the languages of Europe, almost any language will be more different from English than Afrikaans is.

You’re right that it’s not particularly closer to English than Dutch is, although they do share some innovative traits that Dutch does not have (fewer conjugations, no gender).
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby Deinonysus » Fri Jun 04, 2021 11:05 pm

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

I think that I've decided that I want to learn some very basic Afrikaans now (maybe just Afrikaans pod 101 and Teach Yourself Afrikaans), hopefully just enough to wrap my head around the language and maybe start stumbling my way through reading it.

Some time in the future I'll study Dutch full time, and I'll hopefully be able to reapply the knowledge I gain from it back into Afrikaans. But this likely won't come for several years and will be after I reach a higher level of German.
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby Le Baron » Fri Jun 04, 2021 11:11 pm

But you did specifically say 'Afrikaans is very close to English'. So if it's relative in the sense of all languages in relation to English, I don't see the actual meaning of the claim.

It's probably not worth pursuing the discussion. It's the weekend.
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby Saim » Sat Jun 05, 2021 12:16 am

Le Baron wrote:But you did specifically say 'Afrikaans is very close to English'. So if it's relative in the sense of all languages in relation to English, I don't see the actual meaning of the claim.


My broader point was this one:

...you don't need that many beginner resources to get your foot in the door and start engaging seriously with authentic materials.

This is also mostly true for Dutch, although there you might still need to consult verb tables and make sure the dictionary you're using marks the gender of nouns (not relevant in Afrikaans, so you might as well use GT or glosbe). The only thing to worry about as an English speaker would be understanding V2 (for sentences starting with adverbs and such) and SOV (dependent clauses) word orders, but I expect the OP is familiar with that given their background in German.

Of course, this applies to the reasonably experienced language learner (as the OP is); a beginner might need to stick with a more clearly didactic approach for longer.
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby munyag » Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:04 am

Deinonysus wrote:
Xenops wrote:Knowing what I know about you, you seem more interested in languages with exotic features (for curiosity's sake, and for constructed languages), and you also use languages for communicating with family or having access to culture/resources. Unless the pull towards learning more about South Africa is really strong, I don't see that Afrikaans nor Dutch satisfies any of the criteria. You are already have a strong level in German, so neither language will be "exotic". Neither language has the breadth of media like German and French do. So I voted "neither".

This is just my perception, I don't know you very well. ;)

That is very accurate! On the one hand I have the "cool" languages such as Xhosa, Navajo, or Inuktitut and on the other hand I have "useful" languages with a lot of materials and/or speakers like German, French, Spanish, or Arabic.

What is not yet apparent, because I haven't really gotten to this phase yet, is that my master plan for the set of "useful" languages is to establish an "anchor" language for each of the large language families and subfamilies, so for instance German is my Germanic anchor and French is my Romance anchor. Once I have gotten my anchor languages to a high level, I plan on using that ability to learn a bunch of related languages up to the point of diminishing returns. So Dutch will eventually fit well into my master plan, I just haven't reached phase 2 yet.

Xhosa actually fits nicely into both the "cool" and "useful" categories. Although Xhosa itself isn't a particularly large language and doesn't have a ton of literature or cinema or what have you, it is an excellent "anchor" language to the Bantu languages and if I can get it to a decent level, not only would I basically get Zulu and Ndebele for free (with other Nguni languages such as Swati to a lesser extent), but it would give me a decent bonus on nearby Bantu languages like Tswana and Shona, and at least some benefit to more distant Bantu languages like Swahili. Per Wikipedia, "The total number of Bantu speakers is in the hundreds of millions, estimated around 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the total population of Africa or roughly 5% of world population)." For someone who isn't me, Swahili would make a more logical anchor language, but Xhosa has the world's best tongue twisters.


Are you from Southern Africa?Your knowledge of the languages from there is impeccable! I am a native speaker of Shona and most of my family from my mom's side through migrating into Southern Zimbabwe and South Africa speak Ndebele; Zulu, Afrikaans etc. I would love to learn Ndebele but resources as you know are scant I. African languages
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby David27 » Sun Jul 10, 2022 10:26 am

Do as I say and not as I do, get to a more comfortable level in Xhosa first focusing on that. Then add Afrikaans later. That being said, if it were me and I wanted to add a second language, I would just do it. In your case since it sounds like you’re more interested in South Africa. So if you do add another language, I would suggest following your interest and go with Afrikaans.
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Re: Afrikaans, Dutch, or neither?

Postby Deinonysus » Sun Jul 10, 2022 4:26 pm

munyag wrote:Are you from Southern Africa?Your knowledge of the languages from there is impeccable! I am a native speaker of Shona and most of my family from my mom's side through migrating into Southern Zimbabwe and South Africa speak Ndebele; Zulu, Afrikaans etc. I would love to learn Ndebele but resources as you know are scant I. African languages

Thanks! I'm not from the area, I just got a bit obsessed with the click languages (particularly Zulu and Xhosa but also the Khoe and San languages) and I guess I picked up a general knowledge of the languages of Southern Africa because of that.

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!

David27 wrote:Do as I say and not as I do, get to a more comfortable level in Xhosa first focusing on that. Then add Afrikaans later. That being said, if it were me and I wanted to add a second language, I would just do it. In your case since it sounds like you’re more interested in South Africa. So if you do add another language, I would suggest following your interest and go with Afrikaans.

Yeah, I think you're right. In the year since I posted this thread I've been trying to focus more on my highest priority languages, with my sole focus being on Hebrew at the moment. Xhosa isn't at the top of my list but it's probably the highest priority of all my off-the-beaten path languages, and I tend to drop everything and spend a couple of weeks to a month on it about once a year. There are enough English resources that I don't think a command of Afrikaans would be necessary for my Xhosa learning, so it makes sense to avoid splitting focus between multiple languages.
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