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Afrikaans · Afrikaans

Directory 11 resource listings . A short orientation and a solid starting list.

Honest start for Afrikaans: pick one beginner course or community program from the list, add 10–15 minutes of listening most days, and bookmark one reference. Ignore the rest of the directory until those three habits are alive. Use the First 500 trainer for high-frequency words. Last reviewed 2026-08-01

About Afrikaans

Language family
Indo-European, West Germanic
Source: Glottolog
Where it's spoken
South Africa, Namibia
Speakers
roughly 7 million native speakers and 10–15 million total
Estimate source: Ethnologue (SIL International)
Writing
Latin

Afrikaans developed from the Dutch dialects brought by 17th-century settlers to the Cape, reshaped through sustained contact with Malay, Khoisan, Bantu, and Portuguese-creole-speaking communities into a grammatically simplified daughter language. It dropped much of Dutch's verb conjugation and noun-gender system, making its grammar notably more regular than its parent language. It remains one of South Africa's most widely understood languages across racial and regional lines.

Speaker counts are approximate orders of magnitude for learners, not census figures. Family labels follow Glottolog-style classification; vitality notes (when shown) follow UNESCO WAL / Ethnologue-style framing and should be re-checked for program planning.

Related languages: Dutch German English

How to start

  1. Pick one free course (or free-with-upgrades) below and finish a short beginner unit before hopping apps.
  2. Bookmark one dictionary or grammar reference and look up every unknown word for a week.
  3. Add 10–15 minutes of listening most days — news, radio, or a teaching channel.
  4. Drill vocabulary with First 500 words.
  5. When ready, use a tutor marketplace listing below for short speaking sessions.

Practice on this site

Deep links into trainers and drills that already cover Afrikaans.

First 500 words Listening picker

All course free youtube channel course paid reference listening reading

Some outbound links may earn us a commission. Commission never affects inclusion or ranking. Full disclosure.

Resource Type Levels Cost Verified
Duolingo Afrikaans
Beginner Afrikaans course for English speakers.
 course paid A1-A2 freemium —
uTalk Afrikaans
Topic-based vocabulary app covering 150+ languages, including less-common ones.
 course paid A1-A2 paid —

Know a better classroom-friendly resource for Afrikaans? Suggest it with attribution.