WikipediaExtracts:Afrikaans
Extracted from Wikipedia --
Afrikaans ( AF-rih-KAHNSS, AHF-, -KAHNZ) is a West Germanic language, spoken in South Africa, Namibia and (to a lesser extent) Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. 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 course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Although Afrikaans has adopted words from other languages, including German and the 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.
