Comparison of Afrikaans and Dutch

The simplification of verbs in Afrikaans, with almost all verbs being regular and the near absence of the imperfect tense, means that while the phrase ek het gehelp ("I have helped" or "I helped") would be recognisable by Dutch speakers, the Dutch phrases ik heb geholpen and ik hielp would not be as readily understood by speakers of Afrikaans.

When ⟨ch⟩ (pronounced [ ʃ ]) appears within a Dutch word, in its Afrikaans equivalent, it is replaced by ⟨sj⟩; compare machine with masjien.

Both languages also use ⟨tsj⟩ (also pronounced as [ tʃ ]) in some geographical names, despite other differences in spelling; compare Dutch Tsjaad ("Chad") with Afrikaans Tsjad.

[47] By contrast, related nouns in both languages contain the [k] sound, hence communicatie[48] and provocatie[49] in Dutch and kommunikasie[50] and provokasie[51] in Afrikaans.

[53] However, few place names in South Africa of Dutch origin begin with Y, with the exception of Yzerfontein in the Western Cape.

In modern Dutch, ⟨y⟩ is now typically used in words of Greek origin like cyclus ("cycle") replaced by ⟨i⟩ in its Afrikaans equivalent siklus, although both are pronounced as [i].

Apart from ⟨tie⟩, generally pronounced as [tsi] in the Netherlands, there is no difference in pronunciation; compare Dutch provincie ("province") and politie ("police") with Afrikaans provinsie and polisie.

Also in Dutch, final -n is often deleted after a schwa, but the occurrence and frequency of this phenomenon varies between speakers, and it is not recognised in spelling.

As a result of Afrikaans merging Dutch consonants ⟨z⟩ and ⟨s⟩ to a single sound [s], spelt ⟨s⟩, the use of ⟨z⟩ in Afrikaans is confined to words of non-Dutch origin, such as Zoeloe ("Zulu") and zero, or country names like Zambië ("Zambia"), while use of ⟨z⟩ is preserved only in Dutch place names in South Africa like Zonnebloem and Zeerust.

At the end of words, Dutch ⟨g⟩ is sometimes omitted in Afrikaans, which opens up the preceding vowel (usually a short ⟨e⟩) now written with a circumflex.

The word for "day" in both languages is dag, but whereas the plural in Dutch is dagen ([daːɣə(n)]), in Afrikaans it is dae ([dɑːə]).

As a result of the disappearance of consonants found in equivalent Dutch words, particularly ⟨g⟩, Afrikaans uses circumflexes with single vowel letters in open syllables to indicate the long monophthongal pronunciations [ɛː], [ɔː], and [œː], as opposed to the vowel letters without a circumflex, pronounced as [ɪə], [ʊə] and [yː], respectively.

The circumflex is also used in ⟨î⟩, appearing only in wîe ("wedges", Dutch wiggen), where it denotes a long pronunciation [əː], keeping the digraph ⟨ie⟩ from being pronounced i.

This ending is also found in some varieties of Dutch Low Saxon, a group of dialects spoken in the Northeastern Netherlands.

A similar phonetic evolution can be heard in the Northern Netherlands, where the sounds have also been merged to [χ] or [x], although the spelling difference has been retained.

In Afrikaans verbs, the same form is generally used for both the infinitive and the present tense, with the exception of wees ("to be") conjugated as is and hê ("to have") conjugated as het, and there is no inflection for person; contrast ek gaan ("I go") with ik ga, hy doen ("he does") with hij doet, and julle was ("you (plural) were") with jullie waren.

Dutch uses an apostrophe in some unmarked possessive pronouns instead of the digraph ⟨ij⟩, hence zijn "his" or "its" becomes z'n, whereas in Afrikaans, sy is not abbreviated.

It also lacks the distinction between the subject and object form for plural personal pronouns; the first person plural pronoun in Afrikaans differs markedly from Dutch, with ons meaning either "we" or "us", in contrast to Dutch we and wij, hence "we go to the beach" is ons gaan na die strand as opposed to we gaan naar het strand.

[79] A notable feature of Afrikaans is its use of a double negative, which is absent in standard Dutch, but still exists in some dialects like West Flemish, hence ik een niets nie gezien ("I have nothing not seen").

[81] Like Dutch, adjectives in Afrikaans are generally inflected (with a number of exceptions) in the attributive position (when preceding the noun) and not in the predicative.

[82] This also applies to adjectives from which the final "t" has been dropped, for example, while "first" is eers, not eerst, "first time" is eerste keer in both languages;[83][84] similarly, while "bad" is sleg in Afrikaans (instead of Dutch slecht), the "t" is reintroduced in inflected form, hence slegte tye[85] ("bad times") similar to slechte tijden.

[88] Owing to the geographical and later political isolation of South Africa from the Netherlands, Afrikaans vocabulary diverged from that of Dutch, coining purisms or using loan translations rather than adopting terms found in English, as English was perceived as being a greater threat to Afrikaans in South Africa than it was to Dutch in the Netherlands.

While Dutch, like English, increasingly borrowed vocabulary from Latin or French, Afrikaans resisted such borrowing and instead favoured older Germanic equivalents, albeit with some exceptions; one of these is the Afrikaans word for "hospital", hospitaal, which, while understood in Dutch, is less widely used than ziekenhuis (literally "sick house").

[99] Other purisms were less successful; beeldradio, a word for "television" which literally means "picture radio", proposed before its introduction in the 1970s, was abandoned in favour of televisie, already used in Dutch.

[99] In South Africa and Namibia, the TV licence is known in Afrikaans as TV-lisensie,[100] whereas in the Netherlands and Flanders, the now defunct equivalent was known in Dutch as kijkgeld ("viewing money") or omroepbijdrage ("broadcasting subsidy").

[102] Similarly, English has influenced such terms in Afrikaans as bestuurslisensie, from bestuur ("driving") and lisensie ("licence") and grondboontjiebotter, literally "peanut butter".

Like "football" in American and Australian English, the term voetbal is not generally used in Afrikaans to mean soccer, which, unlike in Dutch, is called sokker.

[126] Consequently, some Afrikaans dictionaries give both meanings, with the entry for eventueel listing uitendelik ("finally") as well as moontlik ("possible") as definitions.

** In Dutch, in some dialects d between two vowels tends to degenerate to i (pronounced -[jən]) or w (e.g. goedendag > goeiedag (good day), bloeden > bloeien (bleed), rode > rooie (red), poeder > poeier (powder), loden > looien (lead), lang geleden > lang gelejen (long ago), wij deden > wij dejen (we did), onthouden > onthouwen (remember)), some of which forms are more common and more accepted than others (dialectical, spoken, informal or standard language).

Below is a comparison of the Afrikaans words of the first stanza of "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika" (formerly the national anthem of South Africa) with the Dutch translation.