Afrikaans, African is a West Germanic language spoken in South Africa, Namibia, and, to a lesser extent, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It evolved from the Dutch vernacular of Holland spoken by the European (Dutch, French, and German) where it gradually began to develop distinguishing characteristics in the course of the 18th century. It is considered by most linguists to be partially, rather than fully, a creole language. Afrikaans linguistics researchers maintain that Afrikaans, originally being a peasant language, is only partially creole.
Although Afrikaans has adopted words from other languages, including German and the Khoisan languages, an estimated 90 to 95% of the vocabulary of Afrikaans is of Dutch origin.Therefore, differences with Dutch often lie in the more analytic-type morphology and grammar of Afrikaans and a spelling that expresses Afrikaans pronunciation rather than standard Dutch.There is a large degree of mutual intelligibility between the two languages, especially in written form
