Afrikaans is one of the languages spoken in Southern Africa (predominantly South Africa and Namibia). Small communities of Afrikaans-speaking people are based in other parts of the world after emigrating from Southern Africa in recent years.

Afrikaans is a Germanic language, closely related to 17th Century Dutch, and has been influenced by English, French, African languages, Portuguese, Indonesian, Malay and other languages. Although it is a uniquely African language, it is nonetheless classed as a member of the Teutonic languages, and is similar to the Dutch/Flemish language, which is predominantly spoken in the Netherlands and a large part of Belgium.

There is a substantial body of Afrikaans literature, and it is used extensively in the written and electronic media. Afrikaans have academic status, as there are a number of tertiary educational institutions in South Africa in which Afrikaans is the medium of instruction.

Compared to other European languages, elementary Afrikaans is fairly simple. Nouns do not have gender and verbs do not conjugate differently depending on the subject. A particular feature is its use of the double negative (ek is nie ..... nie).

The base grammar structure is simple - there are only three tenses: past, present and future.

It is a relative young language - the first publications in Afrikaans saw the light in 1875. Afrikaans became an official language in South Africa during 1925.

Also read:Entry about Afrikaans on the Wikipedia online encyclopedia