Hallo, hoe gaan dit? Goed, dankie. Wat is jou naam? My naam is Teddy. Aangename kennis
Hello, how are you? Good, thank you. What is your name? My name is Teddy. Pleased to meet you
If you have learned Dutch before, you may wonder what language it is. It looks like Dutch, but it is not. You can even understand it if you know English, can't you? So, what is it?
It is Afrikaans, a language spoken mainly in South Africa and Namibia. Many people may misunderstand it as "African", which has a totally different meaning. African language refers to the language of African people or on the African continent.
Easy but confusing
I have read many articles saying that Afrikaans is considered an easy language for English speakers. It is pretty easy but somehow confusing for me, especially the word order, in which the verb is sometimes put at the end of the sentence.Afrikaans is similar to English because they come from the same language family. Besides English, I also found its similarities with Indonesian, and apparently, they do sound funny. Previously, I wrote an article about 5 funny words in Afrikaans from my perspective.
Online Afrikaans Course
We all know that since the internet came up, our lives became much more productive. We can do many things on the internet nowadays, such as studying and shopping.Have you heard about a popular language learning website called Italki? If not, I suggest you visit the website and create an account. You can find language partners, practice your writing skill, or find language tutors there.
I scheduled a 5-session Afrikaans course last week and I have just finished it today. My tutor is Vicki from South Africa, living in Germany at the moment. She is not only a tutor but also a professional teacher in Italki. She has had almost 300 completed sessions and more than 80 students.
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| Vicki |
During the lesson, I focused more on learning phrases, like self-introduction, asking questions, etc. Then, the focus is extended to grammar and vocabulary explained from the phrases. I prefer to learn phrases than solely grammar or vocabulary because I want to be able to converse immediately.
My habit of learning is that I like to break the phrases down to words so I can learn about the meaning of each word and the grammar. This method sometimes gives you an interesting meaning through its literal translation that you can recall easily later and associate with the real meaning.
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| my notebook |
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