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# 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 →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/afrikaans/#m1)

### 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 →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/afrikaans/#x1)
- «Dankie» means «thank you» in Afrikaans. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/afrikaans/#x2)
- The word «aardvark» comes from Afrikaans and means «earth pig». [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/afrikaans/#x3)
- My friend from Cape Town speaks English and Afrikaans. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/afrikaans/#x4)
- Afrikaans is closely related to Dutch. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/afrikaans/#x5)
- We listened to a song in Afrikaans. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/afrikaans/#x6)

### 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.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/159-the-congo-rainforest/17/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «afrikaans» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/A/afrikaans/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.