afrikaans

«afrikaans» in Mova's school dictionary: a language spoken in South Africa and Namibia — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (Afrikaans; uncountable); adjective (Afrikaans)

meaning for a pupil

Afrikaans is a language spoken in South Africa and Namibia. It grew from Dutch brought by settlers in the 1600s, with words from Malay, Portuguese, Khoekhoe and other languages. tree →

sense in the lessons

Used in geography and language lessons about South Africa (one of its official languages). English took some words from it: «aardvark», «trek», «meerkat».

examples

• Afrikaans is one of South Africa's official languages. tree →
• «Dankie» means «thank you» in Afrikaans. tree →
• The word «aardvark» comes from Afrikaans and means «earth pig». tree →
• My friend from Cape Town speaks English and Afrikaans. tree →
• Afrikaans is closely related to Dutch. tree →
• We listened to a song in Afrikaans. tree →

note

Written with a capital A. Pronounced af-ri-KAHNS. A person who speaks it as their family language may be called an Afrikaner (mainly for white Afrikaans speakers), but many people of colour also speak Afrikaans.

In the corpora

• Duikers are small forest antelopes whose name means diver in Afrikaans, because they plunge into thick bushes to escape.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «afrikaans» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.