Germanic language of South Africa. It was developed from 17th-century Dutch by descendants of European settlers, indigenous Khoisan-speaking peoples, and African and Asian slaves in the Dutch colony at the Cape of Good Hope.
It differs from Dutch in its sound system, in some grammatical simplification, and in vocabulary. Afrikaans is spoken as a first language by close to six million South Africans and as a second or third language by several million more; there are also about 150,000 Afrikaans speakers in Namibia. Standard Afrikaans was formally separated from Dutch and made an official language in South Africa in 1925; it is one of 11 official South African languages.
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