Afrikaans

Afrikaans is one of the official languages spoken in South Africa.  At Holy Family College, the students begin to learn Afrikaans in grade 4.  For many of the students, this will be the third language that they will learn; with English spoken in the schools, and a variety of African languages spoken at home.

I have had the opportunity to sit in and partake in a couple of Afrikaans lessons thus far.  The first lesson was a review for the students.  The students had to fill in the blanks on the following worksheet.

Notice how the people in South Africa write the date; it is the day, month, year.  January with the 'ie' ending is how it is spelled in Afrikaans.  (And the J makes a sound similar to our Y sound.)

The first statement says, "I am a ___________________." The student is to fill in whether they are a boy or a girl.  This student is a boy, so he wrote the Afrikaans word for "boy".

The second statement says, "My name is ________________."  The student wrote in his name, which is Wandile.  (It is pronounced wuan-dee-le.)

Statement number three says, "My last name is ______________."

Statement number four says, "I am __________ years old."  This student is 10 years old, so he wrote the Afrikaans word for ten.  When the students said the word ten in Afrikaans, it almost sounded like the word "tin".

Next, the statement says, "I live in _______________."  This student put the name of the township in which he lives in.  (A township, here in South Africa, is sort of just like a smaller town which is located right outside of a big city)

The last statement says, "My favorite food is _______________."   This boy's favorite food is bread (He spelled it wrong.  The actually Afrikaans spelling is brood).


The next three pictures are from story books that are written in Afrikaans:

Can you guess what story this is?

Seasons of the Year; Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring:

South African National Symbols (Afrikaans word on the top of the picture and the English word below the picture):

Names of fruit (vrugte):

The following is a link to a website that will let you type in an English word and you can choose to have to spoken to you in Afrikaans.

www.translate.google.com

It might be interesting to you to hear how some of the words are pronounced; not all of the letters in Afrikaans make the same sounds as they do in English.