Can anyone read this????

The first sentence was easy but I needed Douglas to translate the rest for me.

II'll give both sentences a try, without knowing a word of Afrikaans:

"Hello, and welcome here to the land of Afrikaaners. This is so nice in here, as you see. Are you in the correct path, I hope?"

"Have you liked everything that is here in this site, I hope?
Good going.
See [Meet] you later".

lekker in german would be delicious. are we finding the site delicious?

Looks right to me, I know the first part is correct.

it scans to me like a combo of german and dutch.

Douglas told me that it means "nice".

i'm sure it does mean nice in Afrikaans. Interesting how things can be similar but with fine differences.

i also think it's neat that reading something like that can throw my english grammar right off!

even weirder is when the word can haver the exact same meaning but altogether different collocation.

Like:

scandal (Eng) vs. escandalo (Port)

Both mean the same thing but to "cause a scene" is to "fazer um escandalo (make a scandal)" in Portugese.

I've been trying to learn Afrikaans but have only picked up the obsenities that Doug and his Suth African mates toss at each other while fighting. I'm assured that it's a South African thing but worth a laugh nonetheless.

I wonder whether there are differences between Afrikaans and Dutch. I know that Boers are descendants of Dutch colonists in Africa. Or, maybe it is Dutch with some of the vocabulary borrowed from English?

As I understand it Afrikaans is basically Flemish, which I thought was a mixture of Dutch and Austrian (German?). There's definitely a strong Dutch influence but it's a separate language to High Dutch.

Most of my information comes from Wilbur Smith novels. They're mostly set in South Africa.

To Wilso: do you mean that Boers were rather of Belgian than Dutch origin? It sounds new to me; I used to think that Belgian presence in Africa was limited to Congo (the one with Leopoldville as the capital city, and not Brazzaville).

No the Boers were of Dutch origin, but the language is different to Dutch.

I am a Afrikaner/Boer so hopefully I can answer all your questions! I see this post has not been updated in a while, but I'll send this anyway.

OK, first, the translation:
Hello and welcome in the land of the Afrikaner. It is so nice to be here! I hope you are all on the right path?
PS. The guy who wrote this was probably not an Afrikaans first langauge speaker as the text has bad spelling and grammer mistakes.

Who we are:
We are mainly Dutch origin and some French Hugonot, bit of German, and bit of other nationalities. Statistics say it is about 60% Dutch, 20% French, 15% German, and the rest of other. The cape/s.africa was a dutch colony from 1652-1806 and british from 1806-1910.

The langauge Afrikaans:
Afrikaans are scientificly and linguasticly identified as a total seperate developed langauge, not a dialect or creole.
The vocabulary is mainly dutch, but with big differences in spelling, pronounciation and word inflexions. The same word in Dutch and Afrikaans could even meen seperate things (maybe with a common root meaning). This is esspecially true of the swear words!
The other big difference is the grammer. Some elements of english grammer was taken over, but most of the differences developed by itself through simplification. An example: In english and dutch you use for example: I am, He is, You are, etc. In Afrikaans you just say I is, he is, you is, etc. Most of the grammer is like this making the learning of the langauge much easier!
Saying this, it is possible for Afrikaners and Dutch people to understand each other when talking slowly. Sometimes it is just to much of a pain talking slowly and trying to understand the other one that both just switch to english to communicate.

Anyway, if you want to know more, reply and I'll try to answer soon!

Interesting stuff, adriaan.

Welcome to A2K.

tell me what does this mean

alslaam alaikom ??

Salaam alechem or Salaam aleichem? Peace be unto you, Peace be with you.

lol that is so easy! I speak Dutch and it is so similar!

heh. think i'll drag this one outta the archive. just as a kind of random move ;-)



<grins> yeh thats kinda true. I can read Afrikaans pretty much OK, but when we met up with this group of Afrikaners in Zimbabwe and we spent the evening talking at the campfire, man - it is a wholly different language. Took me quite some trouble to follow the conversation, at all - we had to talk slow-ly ... Funny thing was, they seemed to understand us better than v.v.

On a wholly unscientific note, I think Afrikaans sounds kinda cute. Kinda farmer-ish, or almost childlike. For example, on the back window of a bus in Bulawayo, that was apparently imported from S-Africa, it had the warning sign: In case of emergency, "stomp die ruit eruit". In Dutch you would say, in case of emergency, "het glas breken" (break the glass) or something of the like, whereas "stomp die ruit eruit" translates as 'thump out the window'. Heh.



Salaam alechem would be - Yiddish, I guess, no? Whereas A Salaam Aleikum would be Arabic ... but I'm sure it means the same! ;-)