Afrikaans
Germanic, stripped to the bone
The youngest Germanic language and the one that threw away the most grammar while staying fully expressive.
- Verbs do not change for person or number at all. Ek is, jy is, hulle is: one form for everyone, which no other Germanic language manages.
- Two of the past tenses simply disappeared. Most of the past is carried by one word, het, plus the participle.
- Negation comes in a pair. You close the sentence with a second nie even when the first one has already done the job.
- It grew in the mouths of Dutch settlers, Malay and Khoi speakers and enslaved people from three continents, which is why its grammar is so much simpler than its parent's.
- A Dutch speaker reads it almost immediately. The reverse is harder, which is a common shape for a daughter language and its parent.
The youngest Germanic language, stripped to the bone: no verb conjugation by person, two past tenses gone. A Dutch speaker reads it in a week; everyone else learns how simple grammar can get and still work. And the payoff is immediate: Die Antwoord's lyrics, Deon Meyer's crime novels, and two countries of safari small talk open up in weeks, not years.
Where Afrikaans parts company with the languages closest to it, and what each one would cost you from here.
Afrikaans vs English → Afrikaans vs German → Afrikaans vs Dutch →
Reading about a language is not speaking it. These are the places I would go to find someone to speak Afrikaans with.
The Afrikaans Passepartout is not out yet
Five printed pages that carry you through the arrival. Leave your address and you hear about it first, and nothing else.
Leaving takes one click.
Short stories written inside a measured vocabulary, with the word lists and nothing invented for a textbook.