Afrikaans
Also called CAPE DUTCH, West Germanic language of South Africa, developed from 17th-century Netherlandic (Dutch) by the descendants of European (Dutch, German, and French) colonists, indigenous Khoisan peoples, and African and Asian slaves in the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope. Afrikaans and English are the only Indo-European languages among the many official languages of South Africa. Although Afrikaans is very similar to Netherlandic, it is clearly a separate language, differing from Standard Netherlandic in its sound system and its loss of case and gender distinctions.
6,200,000 in South Africa, of whom 1,000,000 are native bilinguals with English,
146,000 in Namibia, 20,000 in Botswana, 2,353 in Canada, 12,655 in Australia,
3,840 in New Zealand, 6,365,000 or more in all countries. 4,000,000 in South Africa use it as second or
third language. Pretoria and Bloemfontein are principal centers of population.
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