Afrikaans

Afrikaans is a West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia and to a lesser extent Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and also Argentina where a group in Sarmiento speaks a Patagonian dialect. It evolved from the Dutch vernacular of South Holland (Hollandic dialect) spoken by the predominantly Dutch settlers and enslaved population of the Dutch Cape Colony, where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Although Afrikaans has adopted words from other languages including German, Malay and Khoisan languages, an estimated 90 to 95% of the vocabulary of Afrikaans is of Dutch origin. Differences between Afrikaans and Dutch often lie in the more analytic morphology and grammar of Afrikaans, and different spellings. There is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, especially in written form.

The name of the language comes directly from the Dutch word Afrikaansch (now spelled Afrikaans) meaning 'African'. It was previously referred to as 'Cape Dutch' (Kaap-Hollands or Kaap-Nederlands), a term also used to refer to the early Cape settlers collectively, or the derogatory 'kitchen Dutch' (kombuistaal) from its use by slaves of colonial settlers "in the kitchen".

The Afrikaans language arose in the Dutch Cape Colony, through a gradual divergence from European Dutch dialects, during the course of the 18th century. As early as the mid-18th century and as recently as the early-20th century, pre-standardized Afrikaans was still viewed by the many in Southern Africa as 'kitchen Dutch' (Afrikaans: kombuistaal), lacking the prestige accorded an officially recognised language like standard Dutch and English, at that time. In the 19th century Boer republics, proto-Afrikaans was not yet widely seen by the Afrikaner population itself, nor by its leaders, as a separate language to standard Dutch. Dutch was expressly the sole and only legally recognised language at that time. Other early epithets, in Southern Africa, setting apart Kaaps Hollands ('Cape Dutch', i.e. Proto-Afrikaans) as putatively beneath official Dutch language standards included geradbraakt, gebroken and onbeschaafd Hollands ('mutilated, broken, or uncivilised Dutch'), as well as verkeerd Nederlands ('incorrect Dutch').

Historical linguist Hans den Besten theorises that modern Standard Afrikaans derives from two sources:

So Afrikaans, in his view, is neither a creole nor a direct descendant of Dutch, but a fusion of two transmission pathways.

Most of the first settlers whose descendants today are the Afrikaners were from the United Provinces (now Netherlands), with up to one-sixth of the community of French Huguenot origin, and a seventh from Germany.

African and Asian workers, Cape Coloured children of European settlers and Khoikhoi women, and slaves contributed to the development of Afrikaans. The slave population was made up of people from East Africa, West Africa, Mughal India, Madagascar, and the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia). A number were also indigenous Khoisan people, who were valued as interpreters, domestic servants, and labourers. Many free and enslaved women married or cohabited with the male Dutch settlers. M. F. Valkhoff argued that 75% of children born to female slaves in the Dutch Cape Colony between 1652 and 1672 had a Dutch father. Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman argue that Afrikaans' development as a separate language was "heavily conditioned by nonwhites who learned Dutch imperfectly as a second language."